On December 30, 1865, Rudyard Kipling – best known perhaps for being the author who produced the works on which Disney’s ‘Jungle Book’ were based – was born in Mumbai. Life for Kipling was not just a fantasy world with colourful characters, however. Nineteenth century, colonial India, came with a distinct cholera and typhoid threat – severe travel health risks that still exist today, for those who go unvaccinated on trips to India.
Kipling’s letters and writing often hinted at the shadow that tropical diseases cast over the British Raj and its colonial and Indian inhabitants. From his words, we gain a sense of how cholera, in particular, created a shared vulnerability that crossed cultural divides. Cholera, which is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, was at the heart of recurring outbreaks in 19th-century India, spreading through contaminated water and food. Poor sanitation exacerbated such occurrences but outbreaks also became a breeding ground from which limited medical knowledge, myths and misconceptions spread.
Cholera in colonial India
The months of June, July and August could be filled with dread in colonial India but even the heat of the spring months could cause cholera to rear its head. In April 1884, the 19-year-old Rudyard penned a letter to his aunt, Edith Macdonald, in which he said:
“As you are seven thousand miles away, I don’t mind telling you that there has been a case of sporadic cholera already and, as this is the third year since we had the last epidemic, we are anticipating a festive season later on.”
In Plain Tales from the Hills, he detailed the extent to which lack of knowledge could create crazy medical responses to the disease, when he highlighted the story of a man named Mellish, who arrived in Simla.
As Kipling noted, “He had lived for fifteen years on land of his own, in Lower Bengal, studying cholera. He held that cholera was a germ that propagated itself as it flew through a muggy atmosphere; and stuck in the branches of trees like a wool-flake. The germ could be rendered sterile, he said, by “Mellish’s Own Invincible Fumigatory” – a heavy violet-black powder.”
Kipling seemed to have little regard for these so-called inventors of medical solutions, describing them all as belonging to a caste of people who beat tables with their fists and talked loudly.
Despite his misgivings, Mellish was granted an audience with the Viceroy, to discuss his anti-cholera invention. As Kipling describes:
“He plunged the lighted end of his cigar into the powder, which began to smoke like a volcano, and send up fat, greasy wreaths of copper-coloured smoke. In five seconds the room was filled with a most pungent and sickening stench – a reek that took fierce hold of the trap of your windpipe and shut it. The powder then hissed and fizzed, and sent out blue and green sparks, and the smoke rose till you could neither see, nor breathe, nor gasp. Mellish, however, was used to it. “Nitrate of strontia,” he shouted; “baryta, bone-meal, etcetera! Thousand cubic feet smoke per cubic inch. Not a germ could live – not a germ, Y’ Excellency!”
Typhoid in India
Suffice to say, cholera continued to rage, despite this invention that had been 15 years in the making. So too did tuberculosis and the dreaded typhoid – other risks that travellers to India can still face today, unless they have the necessary travel vaccinations.
Kipling describes a tragic typhoid situation in another of his writings from 1887, “We had seven cases of typhoid in the Station that winter and, as the average of death is about one in every five cases, we felt certain that we should have to lose somebody. But all did their best. The women sat up nursing the women, and the men turned to and tended the bachelors who were down, and we wrestled with those typhoid cases for fifty-six days, and brought them through the Valley of the Shadow in triumph. But, just when we thought all was over, and were going to give a dance to celebrate the victory, little Mrs. Dumoise got a relapse and died in a week and the Station went to the funeral. Dumoise broke down utterly at the brink of the grave, and had to be taken away.”
Vaccinations against cholera, typhoid, tetanus and hepatitis A
During Kipling’s lifetime, advances in vaccination against such diseases began to be introduced. A cholera vaccine was developed by Waldemar Haffkine in the 1890s. Extensive trials were carried out in India and thousands of lives saved, even if this early vaccine could not save all.
Quinine was also introduced as a treatment for malaria in Kipling’s time. Attempts to improve sanitation began too. However, disease still played a major role in his life, with his daughter, Josephine, actually dying of pneumonia.
Cholera remains a threat for some travellers to India even today, if their activities whilst in India, and their own medical history, put them at higher risk, or if they are travelling to an area with cholera outbreaks. If these situations underpin their travels, a cholera vaccination is suggested.
Other travel vaccinations which most travellers to India should have, prior to travel, are for protection against hepatitis A, tetanus and typhoid.
Assessing which other vaccinations are required for travel to India
Some travel vaccinations which may be required for India are those for Japanese encephalitis, hepatitis B, rabies and tuberculosis.
Furthermore, if a traveller has arrived in India from an area in which yellow fever is present, they need to show proof of vaccination against the disease, through official certification.
India continues to have its health issues way after Kipling’s time, with some of these, such as cholera, compounded by a global shortage of cholera vaccine. This situation has, in 2024, seen an oral cholera vaccine, HillcholÒ, launched by India’s Bharat Biotech.
If you are planning to travel to India, perhaps to see some of the Mughal Empire’s glories or the remnants of colonial life in the country, plan your travel health requirements carefully and with precision. By ordering a Pinpoint Travel Health Brief, you can determine exactly which travel vaccinations you require, according to your own specific travel itinerary, plans, time of travel and medical record.
Don’t leave things to chance, or be swayed by the opinions of a latter-day Mellish! Get a true picture of what is required and then enjoy your travel experience to the full, once you have protected yourself against all diseases with which you could come into contact.