xviii
CALCUTTA AND THE SUBURBS.
A little vaccination was also done at and about Khurdah, a large village in the
Nawabgunge Thannah. On a report that small-pox was raging there, a party of vaccinators was
despatched to stamp it out, but the disease turned out to have been varicella, and their services
were not required. The Superintendent in spite of this availed himself of the occasion to
establish vaccination there, and about 300 people were vaccinated.
SECOND METROPOLITAN VACCINE CIRCLE.
Superintendent BABOO BUDDYNATH BRUMMO.
The ground which was taken up by this circle lay on both sides of the railway, and
extended to the north boundary of the Hooghly District. Many vaccinations were also made
in the Burdwan District, where it is continuous with Hooghly and lies adjacent to the line of
rail. From this as a northerly limit it extended down the railway to the Mugrah Station.
It included a tract of country measuring about 20 miles and having an average breadth of
18, thus embracing an area of about 360 square miles. During the season the vac-
cinators of this circle worked in 343 villages. Besides this, Baboo Buddynath Brummo,
with some of his vaccinators, took advantage of a favorable opportunity which occurred of
commencing vaccination at Nuddea, and thus, besides establishing an important era in the
history of vaccination on this side of India, effected an opening for next season's work.
THIRD METROPOLITAN VACCINE CIRCLE.
Superintendent
BABOO JADUB CHUNDER GHOSE.
The vaccination by this circle was carried on both in the Hooghly District and in the
24-Pergunnahs. The portion of the Hooghly District overtaken lies adjacent to the river, and
extends from Howrah to the most southerly limit of the district, the river front measuring
about 40 miles. The extreme south of the district included between the Hooghly and
Roopnarain rivers measures about 8 miles in width. Immediately north of this the district
is much wider, and the vaccinators worked up to an average distance of 14 miles from the
river. An area of about 438 square miles was overtaken in the Hooghly District. In the
24-Pergunnahs the vaccinators worked in the Thannahs of Joynuggur, Sooltanpore, and Banki-
pore. The Joynuggur Thannah, with the exception of a few villages in a desolate corner, has
been thoroughly vaccinated, and about a third of the other two thannahs has been overtaken.
An area of about 70 square miles of the 24-Pergunnahs has this year been vaccinated, and the
vaccinators have worked in 655 villages.
Besides this, two vaccinators worked for some weeks in the Bongong Sub-division in Nud-
dea, and put a stop to local outbreaks of small-pox. After the vaccinating season was over,
three others had to be sent to the Kooshtea Sub-division where small-pox was reported.
Attitude of certain villages towards vaccination.
19. On the banks of the river for a few miles above Calcutta, the people had been accus-
tomed from time to time to visits from vaccinators,
and came forward readily enough as soon as the vacci-
nators arrived at their villages. The time at which vaccination was this year practised among
them was exactly that at which inoculation was year by year practised, and that therefore which
they looked on as the best time for vaccination. This last fact added to their previous knowledge
of vaccination rendered it so easy to work among them that I think it would be no exaggera-
tion to say that they were really anxious to be vaccinated. This willingness was confined to
almost the very bank of the river. At a distance of five miles from it, in many places very
steady resistance was encountered, and numbers had to be left unprotected. In the same way,
in the south of the Hooghly District, many of the villages, owing to the vaccinators working
there in February and March, though they knew nothing previously of vaccination, were able
to be vaccinated, while other villages only a few miles off succeeded in preventing any
vaccination being done among them. The villages last alluded to lie chiefly in the Ampta
and Juggutbullubpore Thannahs, and the inhabitants have promised to allow of vaccination
in October next. It is highly probable that this promise is only a ruse to gain time, and that
in October they will be ready with another excuse. This check, for it was a very decided
one, was most judiciously accepted by Baboo Jadub Chunder Ghose, the Superintendent of the
circle, as a less evil than pushing vaccination till the population were made hostile. In October
next a determined attempt will be made to win them over to be vaccinated; but as soon as their
temper has been ascertained to be such as to render further measures impolitic, the vaccinators
will be withdrawn from among them for the present. In future years when they have been
hemmed in and surrounded by a vaccinated population, they will be more easy of persuasion
and less chance be run of raising in them a spirit of determined opposition to the practice. It
may here be mentioned that the Mahomedan population are even more difficult to persuade
than the Hindu, and in some seven or eight villages between Pundooa and Mugrah inhabited
by Mahomedans, not a single vaccination could this year be procured.