80
ABSTRACTS OF REPORTS OF CIVIL SURGEONS.
Work.
"During last vaccinating season, 27 tekaits performed 6,516 operations in 128 villages,
situated in 16 different pergunnahs, and I verified the same; the results of which verifica-
tion are given below :—
Number of cases said to have been operated upon ... ... ...
Successfully vaccinated ... ... ... ...
Unsuccessfully ditto ... ... ... ... ...
Absentees ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
Total ...
6,516
5,632
373
511
6,516
Showing an increase of 4,544 operations over those of the season of 1871-72, and giving
an average of 241 cases to each tekait, whereas the average number for 1871-72 was 140
only.
" So far as the returns received by me from the deputy commissioner, up to date, show
1,942, other operations have been performed by 12 ex-inoculators (seven are included, and
five are not, amongst the 27 mentioned above,) in 46 villages situated in 12 pergunnahs,
(seven pergunnahs are included, and five are not, in the 16 pergunnahs referred to on
first page).
" These last operations have not been verified by me, partly because the numbers (taken
separately) were insignificant, and partly because the papers reached me too late in the
season to admit of my going into the interior again.
" The grand total number of operations performed in the year by 32 tekaits amounts
to 8,458, being 5,893 in excess of the previous season.
" At the commencement of last season, 37 tekaits were in possession of lancets, and
since then 11 more applied for and obtained instruments, having previously been ins-
tructed and provided with certificates of their fitness to operate.
" It will be seen from the foregoing that not more than 32 of the 48 ex-inoculators
in possession of lancets have been doing anything. What the remaining 16 men have done
I cannot ascertain.
"In a list of registered tekaits furnished to me by the deputy commissioner up-
wards of two years ago, there were the names of 100 men, and no others have regis-
tered themselves subsequently, so far as I have been able to learn. Scarcely one-half
of those who registered their names applied for lancets, and it is not known whether the
remaining 52 tekaits mean to apply for any or not.
Equal distribution
of vaccine areas.
"The 48 men who have lancets live in 17 pergunnahs, so that the remaining 30
pergunnahs of Maunbhoom are without resident tekaits. I state resident, but I know
that a few of the 48 tekaits have performed vaccination in other pergunnahs besides
their own. Again, the 100 tekaits enumerated in the list adverted to are stated to
be living in 13 pergunnahs, two of which have 41 and 21, respectively! This is a most
unequal distribution, not only as regards the thirteen particular pergunnahs, but as re-
gards the district generally, 34 pergunnahs of which are without any at all. I have tried,
in concert with the deputy commissioner, to arrange for something like an equal distri-
bution of tekaits all over the 47 pergunnahs of Maunbhoom, but I believe the men are
unwilling to leave their homes, though they express their willingness to vaccinate in other
pergunnahs than their own, " if possible." The consequences of such irregular allotment
are seen when I state that vaccine operations have been performed in 21 pergunnahs
only, whilst the remaining 26 pergunnahs are untouched.
" The following points seem to me to require notice:—
Prejudices of the
-high castes.
" First in no place where a rajah or zemindar lives, or where there is a police station,—
and there are many such places, and populous ones too, in the district—have any vaccine
operations been performed. In one place only was I given anything like a reason by a
Hindoo zemindar, who had heard about vaccine matter having been originally obtained
from the cow. I told him that was the source from whence it had been derived,
but that for several years past vaccination had been propagated through mankind from
arm-to-arm. I pointed out to the zemindar of Jherriah that I thought his argument some-
what inconsistent with his reverence for the sacred animal—the cow—seeing what an
inestimable benefit the discovery of vaccination has conferred on nearly the whole of the
civilized world.