Plain Tales from the Hills and Epistles : Kipling’s Public Health Concerns in Colonial India

Plain Tales from the Hills

In ‘Lispeth’ the first story of Plain Tales from the Hills, Kipling, though woven the plot around Lispeth’s desire for marriage with an Englishman, introduced the Englishman as an injured traveller fallen from the cliff while surveying plants and butterflies. Lispeth rescued him from khud and brought him to the house of Kotgarh Chaplain who nursed him to health. The English traveller recovered from fever but weakness and injury forced him to stay longer:

After a fortnight of slight fever and inflammation, the Englishman recovered and thanked the chaplain and his wife and Lispeth—especially Lispeth—for their kindness. He was a traveller in the East he said—they never talked about ‘globe trotters’ in those days when the P. & O. fleet was young and small—and had come from Dehra Dun to go touring among the Simla hills hunting for plants and butterflies. ¹⁸

Although the story is set in the hills of Shimla, Kipling depicted the English traveller suffering from fever—a trope to allude to the Indian environment and its effect on the health of foreigners. Despite the topographical variation, fever was shown as omnipresent and ancillary of the Indian landscape. While there were no scientific testimonials to establish the correlation between fever and topography, hilly valleys were shown equally vulnerable to contagious diseases spreading uncontrollably in the absence of medical facilities.

Diseases and epidemics became the identification marks of colonial India. The term ‘Asiatic Cholera’ was so popular in the European medical fraternity that it later became a common metaphor for uncleanliness and pestilence. The ferocity of cholera could be measured by Arnold’s comment:

In an environment in which epidemiology and empire repeatedly intersected, cholera was a highly political disease, one that seemed to threaten the slender basis of British power in India and to stand at the critical point of interaction between the colonial state and indigenous society. Elsewhere in the world, the significance of invading cholera lay mainly in its capacity to open up fissures within society, particularly between the rich and the poor, or between the host society and immigrant communities. ¹⁹

Owing to the successive outbreaks of cholera in 1831–1832, 1848–1849 and 1853–1854, thousands of people lost their lives in Britain, leaving an everlasting impression on their psyche. Their dead bodies became the source of the contagion that affected the popular imagination of people across Europe when the stories of mortalities made their way from Britain to newspapers published in other European cities. Rev. W. Leigh captured the devastation caused by cholera:

The condition of Bilston had now become frightful. The pestilence was literally sweeping everything before it, neither age, nor sex, nor station escaping.… To describe the consternation of the people is impossible. Manufacturers and workshops were closed; businesses completely at stand; women seen in a state of distraction running in all directions for medical help for their dying husbands, husbands for their wives, and children for their parents; the hearse conveying the dead to the grave, without intermission either by night or day; those inhabitants who possessed the means quitting their homes, and flying for safety to some purer atmosphere; those who remained, seeing nothing before them but disease and death. ²⁰

In the nineteenth century, Indian-born cholera overshadowed devastations caused by natural catastrophes and other epidemics. As per the statistics compiled by E. Ashworth Underwood in the article ‘The History of Cholera in Great Britain’, 21,800 ²¹ deaths were recorded in England and Wales, and 9,600 ²² people died in Scotland in 1831. The severity of epidemics intensified manifolds in 1849 when England and Wales collectively recorded 53,292 ²³ deaths. This trail of destruction continued for several years but with increasing awareness and improvement in medical facilities, the severity and contagiousness of cholera dipped in 1854. Despite this progress in medicine, England and Wales together had 20,097 ²⁴ deaths on records in their rolls.

With the increasing circulation of newspapers ²⁵ in tandem with the rising literacy rate ²⁶ in the nineteenth century, the news of cholera-related mortalities and affected regions were published widely instilling fear of ‘Asiatic cholera’ throughout Britain. The London Gazette ²⁷ (Issue 18807) published on May 27, 1831, released an advisory from the Privy Council for the people, sailing in vessels coming from the Russian Empire to the UK, had to go for quarantine at specific ports designed for this purpose. On October 21, 1831, The London Gazette ²⁸ (Issue 18863) published a detailed report of symptoms and precautions that need to be taken care of by both nurses and family members who came in contact with cholera patients. Family members had to comply with the guidelines that mandated immediate reporting to the local board of health if symptoms appeared in them. Privy Councils of parishes such as Clerkenwell and Saint Marylebone took instant steps by distributing pamphlets and board bills in their respective areas for spreading awareness among people. These kinds of printed materials stigmatised cholera as the pestilence of the East engulfing the West:

The destruction caused by cholera in the East spread a ray of fear in the West and warnings were issued in local newspapers to raise awareness for the effects of cholera. Also in Clerkenwell, London, there was a warning issued regarding Indian cholera symptoms and remedies were recommended. ²⁹

In India, cholera caused unforeseeable destruction owing to dispersed population, poor medical facilities and lack of hygiene. The number of people who succumbed to the disease was unknown except for an estimated figure of ‘15 million for the period between 1817 and 1865 when the mortality data first began to be collected’. ³⁰ As per the report of the Health Survey and Development Committee (1946), ³¹ cholera-related mortality stood at 288,949 in 1877–1881 and 286,105 in 1882–1886.

Information accessibility, personal narratives, discursive representations and ideological biases turned cholera into a public discourse disseminated further through literary outputs, particularly fiction complying with the frames of literary realism. These literary representations propagated the notion of threat from diseases that originated in the East. Mary Shelly wrote The Last Man (1826) to show the destruction from the plague that had its source in the East. Norwegian poet, Henrik Wergeland, published the play The Indian Cholera (1835) in which he not only orientalised the disease but also stigmatised India as the region unsuitable for the British. Tropes like colonial diseases, an ailment of dirt and marshes, became popular which Mark Harrison described:

As tropical hygiene grew more distant from its origins in the late-eighteenth-century Enlightenment, it re-cast India and its people in an un-favourable light and ceased to display any interest in indigenous notions of disease prevention. Increasingly, the Indian environment was portrayed as intrinsically pathogenic and its indigenous inhabitants as reservoirs of dirt and disease. ³²

Contextualising the pervasive thoughts about cholera with Kipling’s writings, it is said that he might have read fiction, non-fiction, chronicles and reports on cholera outbreaks in Britain and India. He seemed to have formulated his conjecture about how British people perceive and respond to cholera. In comparison to other health issues, cholera was considered a fatal pestilence which Kipling brings forth in the short story ‘Thrown Away’ narrating the life of Sandhurst boy posted in India. In the beginning, the boy enjoyed his free life and fell into the trap of whist and gymkhanas. His financial losses turned him into a quarrelsome soldier:

Now, India is a place beyond all others where one must not take things too seriously the mid-day sun always excepted. Too much work and too much energy kill a man just as effectively as too much-assorted vice or too much drink. Flirtation does not matter, because everyone is being transferred, and either you or she leave the Station and never return. Good work does not matter, because a man is judged by his worst out-put, and another man takes all the credit for his best as a rule. Bad work does not matter, because other men do worse, and incompetents hang on longer in India than anywhere else. Amusements do not matter, because you must repeat them as soon as you have accomplished them once. Sickness does not matter, because it’s all in the day’s work, and, if you die, another man takes over your place and your office in the eight hours between death and burial. ³³

The burden of financial losses and disgrace ‘which he was unable to bear—indelible shame—criminal folly, a wasted life and so on’ ³⁴ forced him to commit suicide. Before shooting himself, the boy wrote letters to his parents and to a girl confessing his indulgence into scandalous deeds that not only dishonour him but also threw him into financial complications. The major and the narrator, who went in search of the boy, read those letters and concluded:

It was utterly impossible let the letters go Home. They would have broken his Father’s heart and killed his Mother, after killing her belief in her son. At last the Major dried his eyes openly, and said: ‘Nice sort of thing to spring on an English family! What shall we do?’ ³⁵

The news of the boy’s death would be intolerable to his parents; consequently, the major decided to conceal the cause of his death with a more acceptable and known reason the Boy died of cholera. We were with him at the time. We can’t commit ourselves to half-measures. Come along’. ³⁶ The concealment of the boy’s death behind cholera exhibited the conception of the British towards the disease and their thought that the Englishmen could not cope with the adverse tropical climate. James Johnson, in the book The Influence of Tropical Climates, More Especially the Climate of India, on European Constitutions (1813), argues:

Those Europeans who arrive on the banks of the Ganges, many fall early victim to the climate. That others droop, and are forced in a very few years, to seek their native air, is also well-known. And the successors of all would gradually degenerate if they remained permanently in the country, cannot easily be disapproved. ³⁷

Besides, deaths from a nervous breakdown and stressful conditions were not as serious as dying from cholera. It also pointed towards the public opinion that the number of deaths from cholera was high and caused deep psychological anxieties especially ‘randomness with which cholera seized its victims made it a peculiarly baffling disease, an “inscrutable malady,” to European and Indian alike’. ³⁸

Apart from ‘Thrown Away’, Kipling has shown ideological, ethnical, cultural and racial biases towards cholera in ‘Yoked with an Unbeliever’—a story of Phil Garron who comes to India to work in a tea plantation. Garron’s motivation for coming to work on the tea plantation was to prove his worth by earning money and marry Miss Agnes Laiter who discouraged him from going to the colony. In her description, India is the country of beasts, pestilence, diseases and inhabitable weather. She dissuades Phil from going to India characterised by a host of metaphors capturing the ugliness of the British colony:

When the Gravesend tender left the P. & O. steamer from Bombay and went back to catch the train to Town, there were many people in it crying. But the one who wept the most, and most openly, was Miss Agnes Laiter. She had reason to cry, because the only man she ever loved—or ever could love, so she said—was going out to India; and India, as everyone knows, is divided equally between jungle tigers, cobras, cholera, and sepoys. ³⁹

These metaphors authenticate India’s image as the country unsuitable for the habitation of human beings. Kipling seems to assert that the land is equally divided between beasts and humans perpetually fighting with each other for sustenance. Diseases are as dangerous as beasts posing threats to the British owing to their unfamiliarity with the Indian climate. Arnold validates this perception as ‘their general vulnerability reflected the conviction that European by nature “exotic” in India and so exposed to the effects of the environment to which indigenes must, by contrast, be well assimilated’. ⁴⁰

With the frequent outbreaks of ‘Asiatic Cholera’ in Europe and the unsatisfactory explanation of its origin in miasma theory, the scientific community began to find its sources in germ theory. Miasma means pollution found in the environment in the form of ‘bad air’, ‘foul air’ or ‘night air’ emanate from

the wide-extended bosom of the earth, wherever animal and vegetable substances are lying in a state of decomposition; but in a tropical climate, where heat and moisture give, not only activity to the agent, but a predisposition for its reception to the subject, their united efforts are tremendous! ⁴¹

In the 1880s, germ theory replaced the theory of miasmas and renovated the horizon of medicine in the West. Doctors, medical practitioners, biologists, environmentalists, pharmacologists and chemists believed that the germ theory would have its practical authentication possible in colonies. The main reason for their belief was colonies’ climate, environment, and unhygienic living conditions that support the growth of diseases causing germs.

Kipling has incorporated the germ theory in the satirical but important story ‘A Germ Destroyer’ as ‘crazy people with only a single idea; these are the men who make things move; but they are not nice to talk to’. ⁴² The story, published in the CMG on May 17, 1887, solidifies the foundation of the germ theory in the scientific community and presents the British colonies as the sites to conduct experiments. The colonies were considered the homes of diseases because of their climate and geography. The story opens with the appointments of the viceroy and his private secretary in India. The private secretary John Fennil Wonder schedules the viceroy’s meeting with a renowned man Mellishe of Madras. Another man with the same name Mellish, who had been studying cholera in lower Bengal for fifteen years, developed a ‘heavy violet black powder’ ⁴³ to kill the germs of cholera. He also reached the hill city of Shimla to show the viceroy his invention. Owing to confusion in the names, Mellish attends the meeting with the viceroy in place of Mallishe of Madras.

Although the story has sarcastic narration, it encapsulates the theme of scientific intervention to tackle the menace of cholera. Several types of research were initiated in the nineteenth century to find chemical compositions that can kill the invisible cholera agent without causing harm to human health. Kipling seems to have been familiar with the progress in different types of disinfectants, including fumigation, to which he refers in the story as:

In five minutes, the room was filled with a most pungent and sickening stench a reek that laid hold of the trap of your wind-pipe, and shut it. The powder hissed and fizzed, and sent out blue and green sparks, and the smoke rose till you could neither see, nor breathe nor gasp. ⁴⁴

Tropical weather and its effect on people’s health provided Kipling with themes for his stories and poems. He wrote ‘The Other Man’ for the CMG published on November 13, 1886 (later included in the collection of Plain Tales from the Hills) to show how tropical climate deteriorated the health of British suffering from co-morbidities and prior ailments. The story opens with the description of how the mother of Miss Gaurey forced her to marry Colonel Schreiderling—almost 35 years older than her—though she had been in love with ‘the Other Man’. Miss Gaurey could not disobey her mother and knowingly chose a life of misery for herself. Miss Gaurey’s lover, whom the narrator addresses as the Other Man, was helpless against this match owing to his poverty and poor prospects. After the marriage, the Other Man transferred to a station notorious for its intolerable climate. His health condition became unstable at the new station forcing him to return to the old station for restoring his health. The Other Man died on his way to Shimla. The story’s epilogue encapsulates the theme of death and describes the visit of the dead man to meet his beloved for warmth and consolation:

When the Earth was sick and the Skies were grey

And the woods were rotted with rain,

The Dead Man rode through the autumn day

To visit his love again. ⁴⁵

From the inception of the story, Kipling implicates weather for the poor health of the British deployed in India. Despite knowing the ill effects of the weather, people come to India to make their fortune. Kipling endorses the concept of money while introducing Colonel Schreiderling who complaints of lung issues and heat strokes but prefers to stay in the country for:

Two hundred rupees a month, and had money of his own, he was well off. He belonged to good people, and suffered in the cold weather from lung-complaint. In the hot weather, he dangled on the brink of heat-apoplexy. ⁴⁶

Similarly, the Other Man, who worked in the Department of Transport or Commissariat, preferred to stay in India. Owing to his low social standing and poor income, he could not gather the courage to tell Mrs Gaurey about his relationship with Miss Gaurey. Although the Other Man knew the effect of bad weather on his weak heart, he chose to stay in India and accepted his transfer to the place that enhanced his vulnerability to diseases and climate:

The Other Man bore his loss quietly and was transferred to as a bad station as he could find. Perhaps the climate consoled him. He suffered from intermittent fever, and that may have distracted him from his trouble. He was weak about the heart also. Both ways. One of the valves was affected, and the fever made it worse. ⁴⁷

As pointed out in the above lines, the Other Man’s health declined at the new station with fever proved fatal to his weak heart. Although the weak body constitution made his life miserable, the health condition deteriorated to an unmanageable recovery ‘the Other Man was coming up sick, very sick, on an off-chance of recovery. The fever and heart valves had nearly killed him’. ⁴⁸ The separation from Miss Gaurey worsened his health. He became financially unstable and lost personal happiness. The mental health of Miss Gaurey was also jeopardised when she, under the pressure of her mother, accepted the marriage proposal of Colonel Schreiderling. She moaned the loss of her lover and post-marriage became very weak physically:

She seemed to pick up every form of illness that went about a station, from simple fever upwards. She was never more than ordinarily pretty at the best of times, and the illness made her ugly. Schreiderling said so. He prided himself on speaking his mind. ⁴⁹

Kipling seems to have created the three characters to assert that the body constitution of the British cannot tolerate the harsh Indian weather irrespective of age, health and gender. In some instances, however, he indicates anatomical strength—an endorsement of British masculinity but largely manifests the incalculable loss of human life. The country witnessed frequent outbreaks of fever that took the form of epidemics in the absence of a proper healthcare system. In-equal and sporadic distribution of hospital networks failed to cease the spreading of diseases in small territories. The British Indian government’s administrative policies to establish medical facilities and infirmaries near civil line areas to provide good medical care to soldiers exhibited the failure of strategic planning and foreseeability. As natives were given menial and low-profile jobs to do, they became the carrier of pathogens to the inner circles of British administration.

Kipling attempts to indicate the death of soldiers and children in India from ailments and blazing sunlight. Medical records captured the devastating effects of sunstroke and heatstroke on children. Medical practitioners placed it in the high-risk category wherein a person suffering from heatstroke would become unconscious. William Moore writes about sunstroke in Manual of Family Medicine and Hygiene for India:

Sunstroke of all kinds is due to nervous disturbance from prolonged high temperature, either with or without direct exposure to the sun’s rays. The liability to sunstroke increased by fatigue, mental excitement, depression of spirits, living and especially sleeping in crowded apartments; by want of ventilation, by want of water, by constipation, and by the abuse of alcoholic drinks. ⁵⁰

The cases of heat apoplexy were common among soldiers and forces marching in tropical regions. Depending on the duration of exposure, the mortality rate among soldiers varied about which William Boyd writes ‘in the condition of heat stroke, the patient may die with startling suddenness. He may fall down unconscious, a condition known as heat apoplexy not uncommon in soldiers on forced marches in tropical countries’. ⁵¹ William Moore describes the permanent damages children may suffer in the Indian climate and advised ‘infants and children should be indoors by 7 am for by that time the comparative coolness of the morning air is gone’. ⁵² Kipling highlights these dangers in the story ‘The Daughter of Regiment’ wherein he shows small children succumbing to diseases. In the absence of healthcare centres, medical facilities could not be provided to people in small towns and children died like flies ‘whin the children wasn’t bornin’, they was dying; for, av our child her die like sheep in these days, they died like flies then’. ⁵³ The condition was indeed dreadful evident from the high mortality of children in the summer. Mulvaney reveals that the life was difficult for the British who could not do anything except see their children dying from diseases. His child also died ‘I lost me own little Shad’. ⁵⁴ but the reason for death was not disclosed. Ould Pummeloe’s children could not cope with tropical conditions and died one after another in a short time:

She (Ould Pummeloe) had just buried Muttra McKenna an; the season bein’ onwholseim, only little Jhansi McKenna, who was four years ould thin, was left on hand. Five children gone in fourteen months. ‘T was harrd, wasn’t ut’? ⁵⁵

The death of children was traumatic for their parents who came to India to establish their professional identity and personal life by ensuring financial stability. However, the colonial administration’s sudden orders to move from one place to another had disastrous consequences for soldiers and officers. These precocious orders, Mulvaney believes, from the higher authorities were one of the reasons for the sudden demise of children:

Wan divil’s hot summer, there come an order from some mad ijjit, whose name I misremember, for the rigimint to go up-country. May be they wanted to know how the new rail carried throops. They knew! On me sowl, they knew before they was done. ⁵⁶

The four companies of eight hundred seventy soldiers and their families had to go up-country by trains in the blazing heat with no provision of food and water. The travellers ate and drank whatever they found that led to the outbreak of cholera killing several of them:

whin we had been a night in ‘the belly av the thrain—the men ragin’ in their shirts an’ dhrinkin anything they cud find, an’ eatin’ bad fruit-stuff whin they cud, for we cudn’t stop ‘em—I was a Corp’ril thin—the cholera bruk out wid the dawnin’ av the day. ⁵⁷

Due to the paucity of medical facilities, some boys died in the journey:

May the doctor cud ha’ tould, av he hadn’t dropped on to the platform from the door av a carriage where we was takin out the dead. He died wid the rest. Some of the bhoys had died in the night. We tuk out siven, and twenty more was sickenin’ as we tuk thim. The women was huddled up any ways, screamin wid fear. ⁵⁸

When the situation became uncontrollable for the doctor, Ould Pummeloe instigated the women of the regiment to take up an active role in saving the boys from the contagious disease. Ould Pummeloe opted for battle against the danger instead of escaping the ordeal exhibiting masculine traits perceived inevitable in the tropical climate. Although Oulde Pummeloe knew that cholera spread rapidly, she took the risk of treating the sick soldiers and eventually succumbed to the disease leaving her youngest daughter Jhansi alone:

’Be damned av I do!’ sez Ould Pummeloe, an’ little Jhansi, squattin’ by her mother’s side, squeaks out, ‘Be damned av I do’, tu. Thin Ould Pummeloe turns to the women an’ she sez, ‘Are ye goin’ to let the bhoys die while you’re picnickin’, ye sluts?’ sez she. ‘Tis wather they want. Come on an’ help’.

‘Wid that, she turns up her sleeves an’ steps out for a well behind the rest-camp—little Jhansi trottin’ behind wid a lotah an’ string, an’ the other women followin’ like lambs, wid … barrick—tellin’ him the worrud av the Church that niver failed a man yet, sez, ‘Hould me up, bhoys! I’m feelin’ bloody sick!’ ’Twas the sun, not the cholera, did ut. She misremembered she was only wearin’ her ould black bonnet, an’ she died wid ‘McKenna, me man’, houldin’ her up, an’ the bhoys howled whin they buried her. ⁵⁹

Kipling underscores the poor medical infrastructure and un-contemplated decisions on the movement of troops putting soldiers and their families into danger of falling to seasonal diseases. The vulnerable bodies of children are not resilient to such catastrophes. While little Jhansi has left with nothing to fall back on, Kipling seems to comment on her indomitable spirit to fight against disease and to contribute her ways to the empire. The children of foreign parentage are not the only ones who succumb to the disease, but natives also find themselves helpless against ailments.

In normal circumstances, it is believed that doctors can aptly deal with situations in which their experience and medical skills have a key role to play, especially protection against diseases and treatment of the sick. The pre-empt approach of doctors, as per the public perception, could save people from falling critically ill. However, Kipling undermines this public perception in the short story ‘By Word of Mouth’ wherein civil surgeon Dumoise (also called Dormouse) lost his wife to typhoid. The story begins with the description of submissive Dumoise who peacefully does his duties and marries a lady of the same temperament. After the marriage, the Dumoises lives a lonely life ‘without interruption—just as the Dormoise did. Those two little people retired from the world after their marriage, and were very happy’. ⁶⁰ Owing to living in solitude, Dumoise could not take the help of anyone when his wife falls ill:

Dumoise was wrong in shutting himself from the world for a year, and he discovered his mistake when an epidemic of typhoid broke out in the station and in the heart of cold weather and his went down. ⁶¹

When Dumoise calls the engineer’s wife Mrs Shute for her help, it is very late—a kind of ‘criminal delay’ ⁶² because the battle against typhoid ‘must be fought between death and nurses—minute by minute and degree by degree’. ⁶³ The story underscores the necessity to avoid privacy in colonies as they pose hordes of challenges that could be overcome with ease if stay connected ‘least of all in India, where we are few in the land, and very much dependent on each other’s kind offices’. ⁶⁴ The mortality rate from typhoid could also be assessed from the fact that the disease killed the doctor in Bengal where he was commissioned soon after the death of his wife. The lethality of typhoid has been accentuated in the number of British soldiers hospitalised for medical treatments in the nineteenth century:

It (Enteric fever) grew with great rapidity to become within two decades a leading cause of illness and mortality among British troops. Recorded deaths from enteric fever rose from 1.6 per 1,000 men in 1877 to a peak of 6.1 in 1889; cases increased from 5.6 per 1,000 in 1881 to 36.9 in 1898 but fell back to 16.1 in 1905 and 4.6 in 1910. ⁶⁵

Kipling seems to have highlighted that medicine and care are integral to the recovery of patients from illnesses. Tropical diseases were not only fatal to the British but also to natives who lost their children and loved ones to epidemics. Medical practitioners professed that the anatomy of natives resists regional diseases. Charles Maclean, James Johnson, James Ranald Martin and many EIC surgeons believed that ‘an awareness of Indian notions of disease causation’ ⁶⁶ could help modern medicine practitioners provide better care to their patients.

On the one hand, western medical experts place indigenous medicine equal to modern medicine, and on the other hand, historians estimated mammoth figures of natives dying from cholera in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There are no precise records on how many people died from cholera in the nineteenth century, but the medical reports present a grim picture. Discursive writings and literary accounts also throw glimpses into the ruined lives of natives. Kipling has also captured the impact of cholera on natives in the short story ‘The Story of Muhammad Din’ wherein a small boy succumbed to cholera. The story opens with Imam Din—khitmatgar—pleads his master to give him the polo ball for his son Muhammad Din. After getting the polo ball, Muhammad Din is quite jubilant and invents different games to play with it. The narrator sees Muhammad Din playing with the ball on the veranda. As the narrator crosses the way of the small boy, he is greeted by him Talaam Tahib. One day when the narrator returns, there was no:

Talaam Tahib to welcome my return. I had grown accustomed to the greeting, and its omission troubled me. Next day, Imam Din told me the child was suffering from fever and needed quinine. He got the medicine and an English Doctor. ⁶⁷

A week later, the boy succumbed to cholera and his body was carried to the Mussalman burying ground. While the western medical practitioners in the early decades of the nineteenth century believed that the body constitution of natives had resistance to diseases, Kipling showed the susceptibility of Indians and their children to epidemics. His sensitivity to depict the catastrophe that befallen the families of natives on the death of their children resembles the plight of British women who lost their husbands and children to diseases.