History of Sanitation

HISTORY OF SANITATION 67 nature. Hence it is that the vicinity of towns and the banks of the tanks and water courses are reeking with filth of the worst description, which is of necessity washed into the public water supply with every rainfall. Add to this the misery of pilgrims, then poverty and disease and the terrible crowding into the numerous towns which contain Lead Cistern with the Arms of the Fishmongers’ Company, in the possession of Mr. Merthyr Guest some temple or shrine, the object of their devotion, and we can see how India has become and remains the hotbed of the cholera epidemic.” In the United States official report the horrors incident upon the pilgrimages are detailed with appalling minuteness. W. W. Hunter, in his “Orissa,” states that twenty-four high festivals take place annually at Juggernaut. At one of them, about Easter, 40,000 persons indulge in hemp and hasheesh to a shocking degree. For weeks before the car festival, in June and July, pilgrims come trooping in by thousands every day. They are fed by the temple cooks to the number of 90,000.