Description
The album, most likely compiled by Dr. C. H. B. Adams-Wylie, the plague medical
officer at the General Plague Hospital in Poona (Pune), India, from 1897-1898, records the work of that hospital in great
detail. The photographs
portray the daily work of the hospital and include portraits of hospital staff, views of the hospital wards and grounds, and
detailed close-up studies
of plague patients. Photographs taken outside the hospital compound document the measures instituted by Pune's Special Plague
Committee and enforced by
the British and native soldiers, such as forced house inspections and the holding of residents within observation and segregation
camps.
Background
Bubonic plague, as part of the widespread third plague pandemic, reached the Indian subcontinent from China, where it had
first appeared in 1855,
around 1896. Appearing first in coastal cities, it spread to the inland city of Poona (Pune) in the state of Maharashtra late
in 1896, and by February
1897, with a raging mortality rate double the usual epidemic norm, half the city's residents had fled to outlying areas. In
order to bring the plague
under control W. C. Rand, an Indian Civil Service officer and head of Pune's newly-formed Special Plague Committee, instituted
what were seen by the
native population as excessively strict safety measures. These included the use of British and native troops to enforce entry
into private dwellings for
the examination of occupants and the discovery of afflicted or deceased persons; removal of residents to hospitals or observation
and segregation camps;
the destruction of possibly contaminated personal possessions; preventing plague victims from entering or exiting the city;
restriction of the burial of
plague victims to designated rather than traditional burial grounds; and the banning of traditional Indian medical practices.
Although the extreme
measures quickly brought the epidemic under control, response to their severity fomented rebellion in an already politically
charged district. Despite
the fact that the measures were lifted a few months later on May 19, resentment was such that on June 22 Rand and his military
escort, Lt. Ayerst, were
assassinated by the Chapekar brothers on their way home from the celebration of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee at Pune's
Government House. Such
events, along with the spread of plague to rural areas, caused the British government to switch tactics and focus instead
on mass inoculation using the
plague vaccine developed by Waldimar Haffkine, a Russian Jewish bacteriologist.