xxii
CALCUTTA AND THE SUBURBS.
on the other hand they were sometimes so far worsted as not to be able to get a single case
to submit to inoculation. More than once when a village has been talked over and a day
fixed for vaccination, the vaccinators have found themselves forestalled by the inoculators,
and had the mortification of seeing that the whole village had been inoculated. Such
experiences sharpened their wits and they have been able to repay their rivals with similar
disappointments. On hearing that a day had been fixed for inoculation, they have been able
by leaving the work they were engaged in, to single out such villages and have them
vaccinated before the inoculators had an opportunity for disputing possession of the village
with them. When they have been unable to effect so great a success, they have still been
able to vaccinate many in the same villages in which the inoculators have been at work.
While inspecting I have myself had the opportunity of seeing inoculation running its course
in children who were brought to me almost side by side with children who had been success-
fully vaccinated. It is almost superfluous to say that while these inoculators were working
against them, the progress of the vaccinators was impeded.
Usually the inoculators stood their ground well, but on one occasion an inoculator seems to
have been so much alarmed at his position when he learned that his rivals were Government
servants, that he went to the Thannah and wished to deliver up the implements used in inocu-
lation. The Sub-Inspector refused to receive them, so he made them over to a vaccinator and
they are now in my possession. This armamentarium consists of a shell and a joint of
bamboo half an inch thick and rather more than three inches long, with a piece of a smaller
joint of bamboo as a cork. The shell is used to carry about the cotton soaked in small-pox
matter, while the bamboo case holds the instruments used to operate with. These consist
of a hard thorny spine of more than an inch in length and three needles about 1½ inches
in length and of degrees of fineness. The needles are flattened out at the head into a sort
of scoop. They are roughly manufactured and would perhaps be more properly described
as resembling nails rather than needles.
Influence exerted by those already vaccinated
on others.
26. One of the great advantages to be derived from employing large bodies of vaccinators
within a limited area, instead of scattering them
broad cast over large tracts of country, consists in
the influence exerted on the population by witness-
ing vaccination going on all round on an extensive scale. I believe it would be difficult to
overrate the assistance which has in this way been gained in conducting the operations of
the past season. Villages which at first would scarcely listen to what the vaccinators had
to say, ended in some cases by entreating that they might not be passed over. Of course
other causes which assisted in leading to this change of behaviour deserve their full share
of consideration. The continued importunities of the vaccinators, the reiterated assurances
of the Superintendents, doubtless tended much towards the attainment of this end. That
argument however without which the best intentioned efforts would have failed in attaining
success, was furnished in the spectacle of universal vaccination all around. This seems to
appeal with a force and significance specially its own to the intellect of a hesitating
village. In the first steps of the process it forces their attention towards a consideration of
vaccination and through intermediate stages relating to the safety and desirability of the
protection afforded, it ultimately ends by leading them to accept it. The final effect is not
always the same, at times even in accepting vaccination they do it with hesitation. Some-
times while willingly courting it, they dread the proceeding, at others all feelings besides
seem sunk in the one fear lest their irritating delays and resistance to the appeals of the
vaccinators should lead to their village being left in the forlorn position of being passed
completely over.
Such a powerful agency as the mental effect caused by seeing vaccination everywhere
is one which should on every possible occasion be made use of. So to hem in a village that
they cannot escape from their little world into a region in which vaccinators are not work-
ing in full activity, is a most legitimate mode of influencing a refractory village. If they go
to their usual hâts, there they are met by inevitable vaccinators. If they go to any relative's
house within a few miles, they come across hundreds of vaccinated persons. On the right
and on the left, before them and behind them, always the same sight presents itself. It would
be a subject for surprise if they could escape from the conclusion that they too should become
as the others. Sometimes in giving in, or in asking for vaccination, the people seem to have
had no very distinct motive for doing so, and to have taken no special precaution before pro-
ceeding to the step, when they saw vaccination going on far and near. Some of the villages
however were most systematic and painstaking in deciding the question for themselves.
In one village where great satisfaction was expressed to me, I found that the vaccinators had
visited them eighteen times, and the Superintendent had gone to them several times before
they gave their consent. Besides assuring themselves in a general way regarding the extent
to which vaccination was being carried on, they had sent emissaries to the villages all round