58
Only 16,040 persons were inoculated in the Ludhiána District during the year under
report. All but 58 of these operations were performed between October 1902 and May
1903.
FEROZEPORE DISTRICT.
101. Bet few particulars are available concerning the course of the inoculation opera-
tion in the Ferozepore District. It is recorded, however, that before the suspension of in-
oculation the measure was popular in those parts of the district the inhabitants of which were
familiar with it, and that no difficulty was experienced in persuading the people to accept
it. Afterwards, however, the same degree of confidence in inoculation was never
obtained. While there is little room for doubt that this was the case, it should be pointed
out that from the first but a small measure of success was attained in the Ferozepore
District, and that the number of persons inoculated in October was not, as in most districts,
the highest number inoculated in any month. The maximum monthly total of the Feroze-
pore District was recorded in January, during which 7,579 persons were inoculated. From
this month onwards the total steadily declined to 833 in May, after which no inoculations
were performed in the district. The total number of inoculations performed in the Feroze-
pore District was 24,150.
SIALKOT DISTRICT.
102. The inoculation operations in the Siálkot District were not very successful. Only
13,636 persons were inoculated during the year. This want of success is attributed by Dr.
Jones, who was the District Plague Medical Officer from February 1903 onwards, to
various circumstances.
In the first place, the preaching officers sent to the district were strangers, and did
not win the confidence of the people. Following upon this some of the European Medical
Practitioners appointed to the district proved unsatisfactory and had to be withdrawn.
Only about 5,000 inoculations had thus been performed when the orders suspending
operations were received, and the Malkowál mishap, coupled with the suspension of
inoculations, so shook the confidence of the people in the measure that they only began
to resort to it at all freely towards the end of the season.
It was not until March that the number of persons inoculated approached that of
October, and in April the decline of plague and the commencement of the harvest made
the people disinclined for inoculation.
Dr. Jones remarks that in the Siálkot District inoculation was chiefly a treatment for
individuals, very few villages accepting it freely enough to benefit by it to any great extent.
In the very few villages in which a considerable proportion of people were inoculat-
ed the results of the measure were very favourable.
GUJRANWALA DISTRICT.
103. As the majority of the population of the Gujránwála District had had no previous
experience of inoculation, and were not favourably disposed towards it, operations
•were commenced by attempting to persuade lambardárs, patwárís and chaukídárs to be
inoculated to serve as examples in the villages. At the same time meetings were held in
several towns at which inoculation was advocated and a number of officials were inoculat-
ed. This plan was so successful that by the end of October representatives of 482 villages
in the Gujránwála and Wazirabad Tahsils of a total of 706 as well as a number of other
persons, the total amounting to 6,171, had been inoculated. After the Malkowál accident,
however, inoculation operations came almost to a standstill until towards the end of January,
only a few hundred persons having been inoculated during the intervening weeks.
On recommencing operations attention was at first directed to infected villages, in
many of which outbreaks of plague had already attained serious proportions. It was found,
however, that in this way many persons were inoculated during the incubation stage of
plague, and that the 'development of the disease in these persons discredited inoculation.
This system was therefore discontinued and inoculation was chiefly offered to villages in
the early stages of outbreaks.
This latter arrangement was found to be more satisfactory, and as plague spread,
inoculation was more readily accepted. Between February and April 9,197 persons were
inoculated, 3,709 operations having been performed in April.
By the end of April the people were busy in harvesting and could not spare time
to be inoculated, and only 347 inoculations were performed in May.
The total number of inoculations performed in this district during the year was
16,665, of which the great majority were performed in the Gujránwála and Wazirabad
Tahsils.