'Military report on Tehran and adjacent Provinces of North-West Persia (including the Caspian Littoral)' [‎91v] (187/610)

150
Conditions within the homes of the peasantry, even in the
better villages, are however insanitary. The rooms are small
and badly ventilated, often devoid of windows, with low narrow
doors, and teem with inhabitants who live together, share the
same verminous bedding, and eat and drink out of the same
utensils. c£
In winter they close all doors and huddle round the “ kursi,’
a brazier placed in a hollow in the floor under a frame supporting
quilts. They sit with their feet under the frame close to the
brazier, and draw the quilts up to their waists.
An y epidemic once started spreads among them like wildfire.
The most severe have been in 1830, when the Caspian provinces
were ravaged by an awful pestilence, and in 1918.
jgjpAn epidemic of typhoid following on the famine of 1918
caused frightful mortality in Khamseh and Khalkhal. In the
same year 100,000 persons are computed to have died from
famine and * sickness in Tehran, and typhoid and cholera deci
mated the population of Mazandaran. An outbreak of influenza
in the spring of 1920 in the Caspian lowlands of Kujur and
Kalaristaq appeared on an average to have carried off 60 per
cent, of the population, and some villages of 30 to 40 families
had been practically annihilated.
In the towns qualified doctors are few and “quacks”
possessing influence are often preferred to young men with
European degrees, while in rural areas, with the exception of an
occasional physician to a big landowner, they are non-existent,
and the people themselves are totally ignorant of medical
principles. European travellers are importuned for medicines
and should carry a supply in tabloid form.
Another source of infection both in towns and villages are
the public baths (“Hammam”) to which all Persians resort,
the water of many of them being changed only once or twice a
year.
Infant mortality averages about 65 per cent.
Considering these conditions it is surprising not that epide
mics occur and cause high mortality, but that sickness generally
is not more prevalent. That it is not, is due to the powerful
disinfecting agency An office of the East India Company and, later, of the British Raj, headed by an agent. of the sun and the naturally healthy climate.
Diseases prevalent throughout this area due to this lack of
sanitation are the waterborne diseases of typhoid, dysentery,
occasional cholera, and the diseases of small-pox, typhus, relaps
ing fever, scabies and tuberculosis.
?ei esses of i
®matKaz^
arty, hwes
■iffltioisande
Chiefly influenza.