( 3 )
Allowing a margin in such an estimate, for the possibility of the reporters having
made their enquiries in exceptionally well-protected districts, and to provide for the fact
that the adult population only were reported on, it still seems to follow that the great mass
of the people do avail themselves of the protection afforded by inoculation. Any interference
therefore with the operation must affect very extended interests, and any evil attendant on
its practice is of very widely spread significance.
Is vaccination in India protective ?
6. On the very threshold of any enquiry relating to legislation in the matter of inocu-
lation, the question of the comparative merits and
practicability of vaccination at once presents itself.
There has always been a disbelief in the minds of medical men as to the efficiency of
vaccination performed in India. In the native mind a distrust arose so strong as to consti-
tute a formidable difficulty, when attempting to spread vaccination. They had seen persons
operated on by a vaccinator who when exposed to the contagion of small-pox, die just as
it they had received no protection. They therefore refused to receive the English prophy-
lactic, because a thing which had been palmed off on them as such, through the accredited
agents of the Government, had to them proved only a source of bitter disappoint-
ment and regret. This spurious vaccination is not confined to the lower orders. The
children of European parents have shared in the same delusive protection. Mr. Marson, of the
Small-pox Hospital in London, while I was on a visit to that institution some three years ago,
remarked to me, " vaccination in India is the most worthless I have seen, most of the children
who come home from India are not protected by their vaccination." As Mr. Marson is one
of the greatest authorities in Great Britain on all such matters his observation is of
importance.
As an example of vaccination in India not protective against small-pox, let me relate
what is recorded in the annual report of the Civil Surgeon of Bassein in Burmah, which that
officer published in the pages of the Indian Medical Gazette. He examined into the results of
the vaccination which had been conducted during the previous season, and found that " sixty
of these cases suffered from small-pox, and no less than twenty-three of them had died from
it within the year."
Such a record may well excite feelings of indignation. It may be presumed that no one
would attempt to defend the cruelty of a deception which was followed by the disastrous
results above narrated. Any one with an experience such as the above may well justify
himself in the belief that vaccination in India is worthless. If the term vaccination is only
used as a general one, to include all the operations performed by the ignorant men who draw
a monthly salary as vaccinators, I should feel myself compelled to join in the general outcry
against the efficacy of Indian vaccination. No terms are sufficiently strong to express the
worthlessness of such vaccination.
Vaccinia has no relation to the pimples, pustules, ulcers, and other non-specific irritative
manifestations by which such operations are characterised. It is only by an abuse of terms
that any one who has undergone such an operation can be said to be vaccinated. Though
he has been operated on. by a vaccinator he is in no way protected. On exposure to small-pox
he is as much liable to contract the disease, and to die from it, as any other unprotected
person.
To quote only one more such instance; the Superintendent-General of Vaccination in
the Central Provinces reports, that " at the village of Kamthee and in its neighbourhood
the disease had been spreading for some time, and a Municipal Vaccinator sent by the Civil
Surgeon had been working, as he reported, successfully.
On my visiting the place, the
Kamdar, who was most anxious on the subject, having lost some members of his own
family, brought up numbers of children who had been, as it was reported, successfully
vaccinated, and yet subsequently contracted small-pox. Several exhibited old cicatrices
on the arms, as well as the marks about the face and body of quite recent small-pox;
but the larger number had, in the place of the old cicatrices, ulcers in various stages.
I examined about 150 persons who had been operated upon by the Municipal Vaccinator,
and found that he had been using purulent matter instead of proper vaccine lymph, and
had not produced a single Cow-pox vesicle. The people, uninstructed as to the proper
appearance, and probably measuring the success by the sores and inconvenience inflicted, were
necessarily disappointed by the apparent failure."
Could any thing be more certain than such an occurrence to make people doubt the
efficacy of Indian vaccination ? Still, in spite of instance after instance of a similar revelation
having come to light, the same " impossible system" is more or less carried on in different
parts of India. It is to be observed that these two examples have not been searched out from