( 27 )
of vaccinators has been increased and the number of vaccinated nearly doubled.
In the Etah District vaccination is still very backward. The native superintendent
is a well-moaning man but wanting in energy, and not held in sufficient awe by
his subordinates. It will be necessary to replace him by a more suitable man.
On the occasion of my visit to Kassgunge, in November, I was informed by a member
of the municipal committee that upwards of 1,100 children had died in that town of
small-pox during the preceding season ; yet so little anxious were the people to prevent
a recurrence of this fearful mortality by having their families protected by vaccina-
tion, that I found the vaccinator scarcely able to get a vesicle established. With the
assistance of Mr. Hobart, who kindly accompainied me, I succeeded in giving the
vaccinator a good start ; but on my departure from the district the number of opera-
tions began to decline, and at the end of the season were for the whole of Etah fewer
than last year by upwards of 700. With a more efficient native superintendent, and
with the interest which the Magistrate, Mr. Harkness, takes in vaccination, I feel sure
next season will show an altered state of things. In the districts of Muttra, Etawah,
and Mynpoory, the mortality from small-pox was comparatively low. In all of these
vaccination is on a good footing : the numbers operated on are great, and the percent-
age of success is high. Without laying too much stress upon this fact, the satisfactory
position of vaccination in these three districts, coinciding with diminished small-pox
mortality, may be regarded as a hopeful sign. The returns for the first three months
of the current year do not show a high rate of mortality from small-pox. In fact,
the epidemic just over must have almost exhausted the subjects liable to be attacked,
by killing off a portion and protecting the survivors against future attacks. During
the present and ensuing two years, the children born will partly be vaccinated, and
partly be attacked by small-pox; whilst a third portion, unprotected in either way,
will go on accumulating until another epidemic similar to that just experienced
sweeps over the country. An examination of the statistics of this disease shows
that as it culminates during each season to its maximum during the hottest months,
so likewise it recurs with tolerable regularity in a more markedly epidemic form every
fourth year. During my tour of inspection I have met with a good many cases
of small-pox in the villages in which the vaccinators were at work. This is
what might be expected. Finding from experience that when the people get some-
what frightened by the deaths which are occuring from this disease they are more
open to persuasion, the vaccinators, on hearing of an outbreak in a village within their
tuhseels, generally set to work there or in the vicinity. It thus occasionally happens
that a child already infected with small-pox contagion is operated upon, and the
vaccine vesicle is seen to accompany the small-pox eruption. A good deal is made of
such occurrences by the anti-vaccination section of a village. In the Muttra District,
near Birsanah, I was informed rather triumphantly by the people of a village, that in
spite of my vaccination Seetla would not be denied, and that they could show me a
child suffering from small-pox which had only a short time previously been vaccinated.
Often some objection is raised to my seeing a child labouring under small-pox ; but in
this instance it was at once brought to me, the mother holding over it a branch of the
neem tree, sacred to Seetla. The vaccine vesicle was well formed, and had evidently
obtained precedence of the small-pox,—the latter being extremely mild, and only
recognizable by a few abortive pustules on the face.
9. As usual, the Government vaccinators have done better work and more of it
than either those paid by municipalities or from local funds. This is in effect little
more than stating that the most experienced are the most successful. It has not
unfrequently been a question whether the Mussulman or the Hindoo is the better vac-
cinator. This has generally been decided in favour of the Mussulman, on the grounds
that he is more energetic and capable of undergoing greater fatigue ; whilst the Hin-
doo is slower and has much of his time taken up with his complex cooking arrange-
ments. My own opinion is, that there are localities in which Hindoos would fail,
whilst Mahomedans would succeed, and vice versâ. For instance, Hindoo vaccinators
have never been found to succeed amongst the rough Jâts and converted Rajpoot