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Shasters. I am glad to say I succeeded in convincing this Pundit, and he accepted
the prophylactic for some of the younger numbers of his family. The outbreak in
Dehra Doon was the most serious reported to me during the past season, and during
the year 30 cases of the disease were recorded; of which seven proved fatal, and
23 recovered.
This outbreak originated from a case of the disease, which a Hukeem
of Dehra took into his own house to treat, and from which two of his own family were
attacked with the disease and died. Since these cases one or two fresh ones have
appeared from time to time, but the outbreak seems to have been chiefly confined
within a radius of five miles of Dehra. I must allow that I was not prepared for
these cases, but it only shows, when vaccination has been apparently extensively
carried on, many children are not unfrequently hidden by their parents, when they
hear of the Vaccinator's presence in the neighbourhood, and these are sure to get
the disease, if its contagion enter the village. While at this station I made close
inquiries into the causes of these cases being omitted, and am satisfied that they are due
to the fault of the parents, generally the mothers of the children. In one village I saw
two cases of the synchronism of small-pox and vaccination, which had both recovered,
and in another, where small-pox had appeared, the villagers seemed perfectly satisfied
with the fact that vaccination is a preventive against small-pox, and well they might be,
when they saw the immunity enjoyed by the successfully vaccinated children who were
visible proofs of its benefits, and the gratitude they expressed to the Government for
the present gratuitous scheme of vaccination was, I feel sure, genuine. I found on
inquiry that in one village two cases occurred in the families of Mahomedans, who in
the Doon exhibit more opposition to vaccination than their co-religionists in the
plains. Notwithstanding the trial upon which vaccination has been placed by the late
epidemic of small-pox in the Dehra Doon and Terree, not a single instance of the disease
has been seen in a successfully vaccinated case (if I except the very slight attack of
small-pox from which Civil Surgeon of Dehra suffered) though some have been met with
in inoculated cases, but mostly above twenty-five years of age.
Hukeems,
10. I regret to say that the results expected from the Hukeem's sons and nominees
in the Booìundshuhur District, alluded to in para.
13 of my last Annual Report have not been realized.
Of those who presented themselves during my inspection of the Booìundshuhur District
only one has fully qualified himself for the post of Vaccinator, and has been appointed
Municipal Vaccinator of Boolundshuhr. Of the other applicants, a few studied for a
short time and then left, while others on hearing what was required of them, ceased to
attend at once. I was more successful with the son of an old hereditary Inoculator of
the Doon, who has fully qualified himself, and as stated in a foregoing para., has been
appointed Vaccinator at Jownsar Bawur from the 1st April, 1872.
I have another
Inoculator's son learning vaccination and hope during my hot season tour in the Hills to
get two or three others, and if they turn out as well as the one alluded to above, they will
be most useful in Terree Gurhwal, and will help to show the people of that territory,
that, if I am supplanting inoculation, I am ready to do what I can for the deserving
sons of hereditary Inoculators whose small income may be injured by the present scheme
of vaccination. Judging from the experience I have acquired of these Hukeem Vacci¬
nators, I fear the expectations which I expressed of being able to reach the children of
the better classess through them are doomed to disappointment, and vaccination must
become not only more general, and have some recognized fee attached to the practise
of the operation, but must be raised to the dignity of an operation not unbecoming a
Hukeem, before men of this class will take up the practice, in addition to what they
already enjoy, and consider not beneath their dignity.
Inoculution.
11. In para. 14 of my report for 1870-71; I wrote, "that the practice of inoculation
has as far as I could hear departed from my Divisions,
never I hoped to return," and in the appendix to the
same report (para. 2) that, " during the past season, not a case of inoculation had been