16
CALCUTTA AND THE SUBURBS.
itself, would have been more satisfactory had it taken place in the usual course of the routine
duties of the establishment.
The increase among the permanent residents, as divided between the town and suburbs,
consisted in 194 for the town and 477 in the suburbs. The actual numbers vaccinated in
the town amounted to 5,182 after deducting the cases in which the result was not known and
cases of re-vaccination. The corresponding figures for the previous year were 5,011.
In the part of Calcutta lying under the jurisdiction of the suburban municipality, 8,195
persons were vaccinated for the first time as compared to 7,728 during the previous twelve
months.
Character and
success of the
vaccination.
4. Character and success of the vaccination.—As usual, the character of the vaccination
has been high class. The appearance of the vesicles at each stage of their course has been in
every way satisfactory, and all the vaccination done may be safely assumed as having con-
ferred the largest amount of protection obtainable from the use of the prophylactic. During
my inspection I have rarely had occasion to find fault, and have habitually met with great
attention to minute points of detail laid down for the guidance of the vaccinators. I attribute
much of the high standard of excellence to the successful working of the grade of head
vaccinators, who supervise at every turn the operations of the vaccinators.
During the past season in the town 5,165 persons were successfully vaccinated, giving a
ratio of 99.67 per cent. of successful cases, after having excluded cases of re-vaccination and
those in which the result following on the vaccination could not be ascertained. The similar
ratio during the preceding twelve months was 99.20.
In the suburbs 8,184 persons were successfully vaccinated, giving a ratio of 99.86
on the total number vaccinated, last year's ratio being 99.72. As already brought forward,
I attach little importance to the apparent improvement.
Humanized
animal virus.
5. Humanised animal virus.—In my previous annual reports it was stated that one of
the stocks of lymph at present in use in Calcutta was procured direct from the cow. This
stock had reached its 202nd transmission through man on the 31st March 1874.
This virus remains perfect in every way, though it has been kept alive through three hot
weathers and rains.
Small-pox in
Calcutta.
6. Small-pox in Calcutta.—The past season has been one in which small-pox has been
rather more than usually active, importation after importation of the disease having taken
place and having required to be promptly dealt with.
Throughout the whole year we have had small-pox in Calcutta, though in two months of
it no deaths took place from the disease.
In April the deaths amounted to eight, and in May, June, and July five deaths were
registered in each month. In August one death took place, while none occurred in September
or October. One death took place in November, three in December, and nine in January.
The mortality declined in February to five, but again increased in March, when 25 deaths
were reported. These figures may be accepted as substantially correct, though, if wishing for
extreme exactness, the number of deaths in March may be regarded as overstated, owing to
an epidemic of measles having assisted to swell the mortality actually due to small-pox. This
error is a trivial one, and in no way affects the value of the deductions to be drawn from the
figures taken as a whole. That we are now passing through a season which before vaccination
controlled the disease in Calcutta would have been one in which the sacrifice of human life
would have been immense, allows of no room for doubt. What would have been an epidemic
year now hardly admits of being with justice designated as such.
Besides isolated cases which were met with over both the town and suburbs of Calcutta,
which did not spread either owing to the state of protection already existing in the neigh-
bourhood, or owing to steps being taken to supply any deficiency found to exist in the following
instances, small-pox gained a more or less firm footing before the materials capable of sustaining
it were used up. At Bamun Bagan, in the Taltullah thana, in January and February last six
or seven cases occurred. The disease singled out individuals who in former years had refused
vaccination, and after having, in consequence of active vaccination, left the neighbourhood for
a whole month, returned in the person of a purdah neshin who had escaped the inquiries of
the vaccinators. Between the 9th of February and 28th March ten cases of small-pox came
to notice in Muddun Mitter's Lane and its immediate neighbourhood. The first of these was
an imported case in the person of a hawker of vegetables; among these only three Calcutta
children were attacked, aged three and five years, and one of 15, who had been vaccinated at
the age of two and had the disease in a modified form. The other seven were adults, most of
whom belonged to the Hooghly or Burdwan districts, and were not thus in the strictest sense
Calcutta people, though residing more or less permanently in the place.
In the suburbs the disease was introduced by a man from the Ghazeepore district, who
communicated it to a woman in the middle of January living at Metiabruj. Both this woman
and her child died of the disease, but very active measures were at once adopted, and proved
successful in preventing the disease from spreading, though the neighbourhood was a very
dangerous one for such a spark to fall in
To any one watching the progress of small-pox, it always affords matter for surprise how
unerringly any weak point is pounced upon by the disease. In the Manicktollah suburb in