Beneficial Effects of Vaccination in India. 471 



HIGHLY BENEFICIAL EFFECTS OF VACCINATION IN INDIA. 



The subjoined gratifying statement of the effects of vaccina- 

 tion in the Pergunna of Broach, in India, terminates " A Sta- 

 tistical Account of the Pergunna of Jumboosur, by Thomas 

 Marshall, Esq." just published in the third volume of the 

 Transactions of the Literary Society of Bombay. We ardently 

 hope that the same blessing will, ere long, be extended to the 

 whole native population of Hindustan, according to Mr. Mar- 

 shall's suggestion. 



" No malady, generally incident to the native population of 

 India, is more deserving of notice than small-pox, whether we 

 regard the extent of its ravages, or the value of the check 

 which they have received, and may still further receive, by the 

 introduction of vaccination. This contagion seems to make a 

 sweeping visit throughout the country about once in three 

 years ; five j^ears are a very long and very unusual exemption. 

 At each visit it is supposed that about two-thirds of all capable 

 of receiving the infection are attacked, and of the attacked 

 nearly one half dies ; of the other half, a considerable propor- 

 tion, perhaps one-sixth, is left unfit for the ordmary duties of 

 life, by total or partial loss of eyesight, contraction of joints, 

 incurable ulcers, or mental fatuity. Since the vaccine infection 

 was introduced, in 1812, into the neighbouring Pergunna of 

 Broach, by my predecessor, the small-pox may be said to have 

 altered the habit of its march altogether. It has in that in- 

 terval appeared twice, and the latter time very fatally, on the 

 eastern boundary ; but it made very little progress throughout 

 the vaccinated villages, and never attained the force of a ge- 

 neral contagion. In 1817 and 1818 I re-visited the greater 

 number of the villages where vaccination had been effected 

 four or five years before, and made the most accurate inquiries 

 I could regarding the exemption experienced by the vaccinated 

 subjects during the subsequent visits of the epidemic small-pox; 

 1 did not hear of a single instance of such a subject having 

 been attacked, though the numbers regarding whom inquiry 

 was made were not below seven thousand. The people seemed 

 not to entertain the slightest doubt of the vaccine aflection im- 

 parting the same immunity to the constitution as it acquires 

 by one suffering the natural disease itself, though their suspi- 

 cious reluctance to the introduction of any novelty would have 

 led them loudly to proclaim any failure in the assurances held 

 out to them, had any such occurred." 



" It is much to be wished that some general plan should be 

 adopted, which would ensure to our native village population 

 the benefit of this most important of modern discoveries, once 

 in four or five years. We have made them acquainted with 



its 



