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8. I will now state briefly the result of my inquiries in the Broach Districts. I
visited all such villages of the Broach and Wagra Talookas in which, according to the
Tullatees' returns, small-pox was said to have occurred in children some time after being
vaccinated, and some deaths said to have resulted therefrom. I collected the children of
such villages that were vaccinated during the year 1866, and examined them, one after
another, according as their names were entered in the Vaccinator's register-book. In none
of these could I find a single child with marks of small-pox, or any child that was said
to have had small-pox at all, however mild. A few children in some of the villages had
died subsequent to vaccination, and, on inquiry of the parents of such children, the cause
of death was made out to be fever, pneumonia, diarrhœa, or some other disease, but no
parent of a vaccinated child stated that it died subsequently of small-pox. In one
village (Urgaum) the Tullatee insisted that though the children vaccinated in the year
1866 had not died of small-pox, he was sure that other children vaccinated in pre-
vious years had died of the disease. One villager was named whose children were said
to have so died; this man was sent for, and, in the presence of the Tullatee, the Patel,
and the other villagers assembled, he stated that death had resulted not from small-pox
but from cholera.
9. As regards the talookas of Amode and Jumboosur, though the Collector's
returns do not show any deaths as resulting from small-pox after vaccination, yet in
the villages of these two talookas, which I visited for the inspection of work, I made
inquiries of the inhabitants whether they remembered any instance in which a child
previously vaccinated was known to have had small-pox and to have died of it. The
reply to such an inquiry was invariably in the negative.
10. As regards the prevalence of small-pox I was satisfied that it did exist in
some villages of the Broach District, particularly in the villages of Sumnee, in the
Wagra Talooka, and Seetpoor Tunkaria, in the Broach Talooka. But these villages
were almost entirely unprotected by vaccination, in consequence purely of the opposi-
tion to it of its inhabitants, who are all Borah Mahomedans.
11. The existence of this disease, however, must not have been in 1866, but
in the earlier months of 1867, a time when it was more or less prevalent in the whole
of Guzerat—as seems probable from the following particulars of Seetpoor Tunkaria, a
large and populous village. Our Vaccinator went to work there in the months of
July and August 1866, and could only succeed in vaccinating 89 children; a great
many were left unprotected, because the majority of parents ignorantly, and, as they
themselves admitted at the time of my visit, foolishly, refused to allow the benefit
of vaccination to their children. Small-pox subsequently broke out in this village.
The few children who were protected in the previous year were found to resist the
influence of Devi Matta; so when our Vaccinator again went to this village in the
month of March 1867—probably the time whem small-pox had already broken out,
and had taught the villagers a good lesson—he was overcrowded with work, for
between March and April he vaccinated 151 children.