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DARJEELING CIRCLE.
averse to or indifferent on the subject of vaccination, they would not have taken the trouble
to address me at all.
16. I may add one instance more of the value the people set upon a vaccinator's services.
I found it necessary, to fill a pressing vacancy, to remove the vaccinator who for the previous
season had been working at Sherepore in the Bograh District. I had utterly failed, as I
stated in my first report, to introduce vaccination there when my establishment was origin-
ally formed, and during the second season the work had been only fairly successful. The
inhabitants, however, when they found that the vaccinator did not re-appear amongst them,
sent him many urgent messages to return.
17. These instances may be safely accepted as a great advance upon my first-season's
experience, when I often spent hour after hour in villages without succeeding in inducing
even one person to submit to the operation. During my tour this year, I did not find a single
vaccinator, who could complain that the people generally would not accept his services; there
are of course still many who decline vaccination, especially Mussulmen, on religious grounds,
and many who are, as in more civilized countries, apathetic and indifferent, but at most of my
vaccinators' stations such recusants are in a very decided minority.
18. Some prejudices still remain to be overcome, and the chief of them perhaps is
that against submitting infants to the operation, scarcely ten per cent. of the whole number
vaccinated are under one year of age. The principal reason for this is, that the fever attendant
on the maturation of the vaccine pustule is generally strongly marked in native children
(much more so than in European), and the parents dread its severity in the case of infants.
Popular impressions of this kind are not to be overcome at once by assurances of their ground-
lessness. It is to be hoped that they will wear away in time.
19. Another erroneous notion common amongst the people is, that vaccination affords a
complete immunity from small-pox. I have reason to suspect that the vaccinators, in their
anxiety to obtain support, have occasionally rather exaggerated its benefits and promised too
much on its behalf. They have been warned on this point.
20. Throughout my circle, the lancet and the ivory points have been abandoned for the
needle and ivory slips used, and, I believe, first introduced into India in the North-Western
Provinces. The needles, of which I procured a supply from Moradabad, are not only much
more effective than the ordinary lancet, but they cost very much less, and last a much longer
time; indeed the lancet loses its fine point after a short use, and then becomes a very clumsy
instrument. The ivory point, as ordinarily made, has either so fair a point that a very minute
charge of lymph only can be introduced into the puncture in the skin, or it is so broad at the
extremity, and I have noticed this in the points sent from England, that it would be necessary
to make quite a large preliminary opening to enable it to get under the cuticle at all. The
charged ivory slip used in the North West, is merely rubbed twice or thrice over the latticed
scratches made in the skin by the needle, and I feel certain that by its use, the chances of
failure are reduced to a minimum.
21. On the score of economy and effectiveness, I venture to recommend the exclusive
adoption of the needle and ivory slip for vaccinating purposes. They do not appear to be so
well known as they deserve to be in Bengal Proper, and I confess 1 first learned their value
from the native superintendents sent to me by Dr. Pearson.
22. As the intimacy of the people with vaccination increases, arm to arm operations
become more generally permitted; but, for the purpose of conveying lymph from one village to
another, should they lie at all apart, the charged ivory slip must be still extensively used.
23. My vaccinators are, as a rule, interdicted from using crusts; with ordinary diligence,
no vaccinator should find himself without a supply of recently charged slips, and there is one
great objection to crusts, that, unless they are selected with great care, whether it is that
the results of suppuration (which have been proved to be readily inoculable) contaminate them,
or from some other cause, the chances are that out of three vaccinators from the ordinary
crusts, one will result in a doubtful case. I have been frequently able to detect from a glance at
his recent cases, that a vaccinator has been using crusts.
24. This observation does not apply to crusts, so far as I know, taken from European
children; the latter are so much more carefully tended than the ordinary village children of the
natives, that the difference is to my mind easily to be accounted for.
25. Small-pox was either more prevalent, or more carefully reported during the season
just past than in the two previous. The principal epidemic was in the Purneah District, to
cope with which I was directed to depute a vaccinating party, upon whose proceedings I have
submitted a separate report. Purneah being one of the districts in my circle as yet not taken
up, the native superintendent of the Dinagepore District was necessarily sent to the seat of the