SUB-ASSISTANT SURGEONS AS SUPERINTENDENTS OF VACCINATION.
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and in the discharge of which much is necessarily left to the trustworthiness of the agents dis-
charging them owing to the limited nature of any controlling power, are those for which special
remuneration must be made, with the view of being able to command the services of such
persons as those to whom alone such duties can be with safety entrusted.
Resume of circumstances under which success
or failure will be met with.
6. It may be almost predicted beforehand under what circumstances this class of Govern-
ment servants will fail as Superintendents of Vac-
cination and when, on the contrary, they will turn out
useful agents of the Government.
Select a Sub-Assistant Surgeon who has been some years in the service when he has
become more or less trained to business habits, when his powers of mind have become deve-
loped, and when by a separation from home and experience of a world beyond Bengal he
has gained a fair share of self-reliance and become somewhat indifferent to the discomforts
of leaving his home, and after having thus selected such a person on account of these qualities
and in consideration of his being a trustworthy agent and one who has proved that he can
work well, avoid the mistake of expecting him to discharge faithfully and zealously the
duties of a difficult and distasteful appointment for the same amount of remuneration
that he would receive while performing those far more easy and of a more genial kind, and
it may be expected that a Sub-Assistant Surgeon so selected and so paid will turn out a
good Superintendent of Vaccination.
On the other hand, take a young lad fresh from college, unused to the business of life,
untrained in dealing with other men, ignorant of everything save the elements of professional
study, his mind fixed constantly on the wrong he has to endure in being forced to leave his
home, and ready to brood with melancholy on every little discomfort he is called on to endure,
and on each difficulty which it is his duty to overcome—send such an untrained and unproved
agent to be a Superintendent of Vaccination with a full knowledge of the drawbacks he has
to encounter, and of the much more desirable nature of any other appointment which a
member of his service can hold, and the result is all but inevitable that the work he does
will be deficient in quantity and imperfect in quality, in short, that he will prove an undesirable
servant of the Government in such a capacity. Such a one, according to individual disposi-
tion and other adventitious circumstances, will either resign the public service or devote his
whole energies in striving to obtain some other appointment.
Reasons why Sub-Assistant Surgeons should be
employed as Superintendents of Vaccination.
7. Experience, now extending over many years, has proved that Sub-Assistant Surgeons
selected with care and judgment to fill the responsi-
ble positions of Superintendents of Vaccination are
capable of filling such posts with great credit to them-
selves and advantage to the Government while working under the Calcutta system, under
which a greater amount of European general superintendence is available than under any
other system of vaccination.
Quite independently of the consideration of its being advisable to take advantage of
local resources, Sub-Assistant Surgeons stand on a vantage ground in regard to several points,
which, other things being nearly equal, gives them great facilities when brought in competi-
tion with those not born or brought up in the country. When argument or persuasion are
required, having to deal with the people in a language which is their own, places them at once
in marked contrast with any European officer, the fact being that the knowledge of Ben-
gallee possessed by Medical Officers is of a very rudimentary nature and but ill suffices for
the duties required of a Superintendent of Vaccination.
Points of religion so often come forward, and on such, while the assertions of a christian,
however well informed, either pass unheeded or are looked on with suspicion, those of a
co-religionist of superior position in the social scale are allowed great weight, his bare
dictum often passing unquestioned, and on any discussion arising his view of the case or his
explanation of the difficulty being sufficient in many instances to settle the point.
The personal difficulties in the same way to be encountered in the discharge of his duties
weigh lightly on the inhabitant of this country when compared to what they prove to a Euro-
pean. In the districts round Calcutta roads between the different villages are so rarely met
with that the Superintendent of Vaccination may be said to be forced to move constantly
across fields, and over a country in which wheeled conveyances cannot be used. Under
similar circumstances in other parts of India camels can be used, but in Bengal they are not