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and January, originating as described in para. 9, and seven in one village in February,
and the remainder appeared in twos and threes in different villages near Dehra, and
were all unvaccinated cases, which must have been concealed by their parents, when
the Vaccinator visited these villages. A very different result to this would have been
noticed had small-pox been similarly imported into the Meerut or Moozuffernuggur
District, from the former of which I only lately received a report to the effect, that,
nearly as many cases of small-pox were present in one village at the same time, as
have been met with during the past year in the Dehra Doon. During the past
season, a copy of the returns of each tehseel and Municipality has been sent monthly to
the Magistrate of the several districts in the Agra and Meerut Divisions, and these
officers have been requested to test their accuracy in any way they may think best,
either by doing it themselves, while on tour in their districts, or deputing their official
subordinates to do it. In support of the correctness of the returns now submitted, I
must add that I have received no reports of any false entries from the officers, while
those who have examined them have, up to the present, reported that they have been
found correct. The more these village returns are inspected and tested, the better
for the Department, as it ensures their correctness, and also exhibits to the villagers
the interest which the Government, through its District Officers, takes in the present
scheme of vaccination.
General remarks.
14. Though, perhaps, encroaching upon the province of the Sanitary Commis-
sioner, yet I must allude to a strong conversation, which occur-
red in a village neare Sirdhunah, owing to its direct bearing on
vaccination, as regards the permanence of the benefits it confers. When pointing
out to the villagers these benefits, in the cases of the children successfully vaccinated
in previous years, and whose unpitted faces were my best proofs, the villagers
remarked though these are alive, many have died. This conversation took place in the
centre of the village, so I took the head men with me to their chief well, which I had
noticed when entering the village, and pointing to the manure heaps, which surrounded
it in high mounds, said, I wondered that so many of these vaccinated children are
alive, and the villagers are failing to prove that the children died when small-pox
was even prevallent. I added that no doubt they died of the prevailing fever, which
they allowed spared the aged and attacked chiefly the adult and young portion of the po-
pulation. I fear the state of the village which I am about to describe, may be taken as
a type of also too many, and when the scourge of small-pox is added to the train of
fatal diseases, which must result from such a total absence of any attempt at sanitation
among a water-drinking population, the wonder to me is, not that so many deaths
occur among the successfully vaccinated cases, but that the population attains the figure
it does. This village was surrounded with sugar-cane cultivation, the yield of which
the villagers know by experience is in proportion to the amount of manure given to
the soil, and, except where the houses were too close to admit of it, the village was convert-
ed into a mass of dung heaps, and, as in this case, which I fear is not an exception,
the greatest collection of these village sweepings, as noted before, was around the chief
well of the village, which was almost on a level, with and close to, a nearly stagnant
swamp. I asked these villagers two questions, which I trust will make them view
these heaps in a different light; the first was, " where do the children in the village go
for the purpose of nature ?" And, their answer was " to the lane front of their houses,"
I remarked then ; " you know what is added to these village sweepings." My second
question was, " when it rains, is not the water from heaps likely to find its way into the
well?" to this I got no reply.
On suggesting that these heaps of manure should be collected at a distance from
the village, the answer of one and and all was that it would be stolen at night. In the
Moozuffernugur District, I am told that it is not unusual to find this manure stored in
the houses for better security ! ! I can, under these circumstances, therefore only again
wonder, not that a few proofs of the benefits of vaccination exist in village, like that, I