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many parents destroy their children's vesicles. This is doubly mischievous. It not
only robs us of lymph, but lessens the protection to a child; and should in the course
of events this particular child become attacked with small-pox, blame is laid at the
door of vaccination, more especially should the attack prove at all dangerous or fatal—
when also the wrath of the offended and incensed " Shitala" is supposed to be brought
into play. The mischief resulting from this is not at all so trifling or uninfluencing
as one might at first sight be led to suppose. It is fraught with serious consequences,
and must always be viewed with apprehension and solicitude. And 3rdly, as a result
of the foregoing, lymph cannot be secured in quantities to vaccinate all the applicants.
2. I have stated at the commencement of the present report that during the
past year a system of domiciliary vaccination has been inaugurated which, if carefully
and patiently carried out, bids fair to render vaccination popular, and to greatly extend
its benefits with the least possible trouble to all concerned. It has been in this wise :
After repeated failures of heifer after heifer, I succeeded towards the middle of December
in once more re-establishing animal vaccine lymph. This continued to give more or
less favourable results, till during the last two months not a single heifer proved a
failure. The success was not confined to producing the disease in the heifers only, but
the lymph derived from them produced beautiful vesicles in the human subject also.
The ample resources at our command from the grant of that great Parsee philan-
thropist, Mr. Cowasji Jahangierji, C.S.I., and that also from the Municipality, gave us
the means of buying heifers in numbers; and we inoculated from 10 to 15 or more
every month ; thus giving us a handy store of pure and effective lymph in great abun-
dance, for almost every day's use. I had besides a large staff of vaccinators and peons
given me by the Municipality, and with their assistance I was enabled to carry these
heifers—to convey this handy store of excellent lymph, from district to district—nay
almost from street to street, and to vaccinate children by scores almost without a single
failure ; besides working at the usual morning stations, of which there are six, one for
each of the week days. Though there was no regular station established for Sundays,
our lymph was too valuable to be lost for that day : and as small-pox was also found
to make head towards the end of the year, we could not but utilize every drop of our
lymph and every moment of our time. "We therefore worked on Sundays as well as on
other days. During these peregrinations, I have had everywhere confirmation of what
I have said before. Persons, instead of taking advantage of our presence at their very
door as it were, and coming in numbers, were found to try hard to conceal their children
—run away with them, or shut themselves up in their houses. The presence of our
vaccinators and their peons was the sign for a general stir and bustle ; and women
would be seen running about here and there, their children in their arms covered in
under the end of their dress, and trying hard to find a place of refuge. Not that they
had no confidence in vaccination, on the contrary, many of them were known to bring
their children all the way to a distant station, some five or six miles from their homes
and to show an amount of earnestness and anxiety about getting them vaccinated that
they would not hesitate to offer a small reward to the vaccinifer to allow lymph for