Carter has gained in other countries, his deputation in the manner proposed will be attended with excellent results… 46
Within
India
also Carter did
not lack for an influential
opponent -- none other than the head of the country’s establishment, the
“notoriously anti-contagionist”
medical
James McNabb
Cuningham (1829-1905), Sanitary Commissioner with the Government of India. 47
His
obituarist
described
Cuningham
as
being
“apt
to
throw cold water on strivings towards truth by local enquiry and clinical and pathological research… 48
Cuningham
acted true to form and
reputation by faulting all of Carter’s recommendations and theoretical premises. [Dr. Carter’s] opinion … rests on a very slender basis of evidence. By his own showing only about one-third of the Lepers of Norway were in Asylums at the end of 1870, and it is not probable that such a partial measure could have had very decided effect. Such segregation commends itself to those who believe that leprosy is in some way or other contagious, but it would appear that there is very little to support this idea.49
Advised by Cuningham, the authorities replied that even if leprosy could be “stamped out” by isolating the affected in the manner of medieval Europe and contemporary Norway, … the Governor-General-in-Council believes that it will be impractical to put Dr. Carter’s theory in practice in this country…. It may be said … there cannot be less than a 100,000 Lepers in British India. The Government could not undertake to build hospitals for all these people, and to keep up establishments for them, to clothe and feed them, and practically to turn them into sick paupers. To say nothing of the enormous cost which these measures would entail, the difficulties of attempting anything of the kind would be insuperable. 50 -----------------------------------MSAGD, Vol. 35, 1875, p 237.
46
47
Norman Howard-Jones, The Scientific Background of the International Sanitary Conferences 1851-1938, Geneva, World Health Organisation, 1975, p 74. Cuningham, an Edinburgh medical graduate, was an IMS officer of the Bengal cadre. He was Sanitary Commissioner with the Government of India between 1868-1884, and after the amalgamation of the two posts, held additional charge as Surgeon-General from 1880 to 1884. Harrison, Public Health, p 237. 48
Cuningham’s obituary in British Medical Journal, 15/7/1905.
49
NAI, Home Department, Medical Branch. March 1875. Proceedings 10-14A.
50
Ibid, p 22. Causation controversy in India
67