1904.] L. Rogers — Special Beport on Fever in Dinajpur List. 55 



desert, and any practical increase can only be a matter of very slow 

 growth. Private practitioners abound in Dinajpur itself, and although 

 a large proportion of them profess homoeopathy, yet they doubtless do 

 some good in the treatment of fevers. In the district itself, however, 

 they are almost a negligible quantity. 



Turning next to the post-office distribution I found that there are 

 but 40 post-offices to very nearly 4,000 square miles, or one to every 100 

 square miles. Further, seven of these are in the same places as a dis- 

 pensary is situated. During 1903 throughout the whole district only 

 8,064 packets of the drug were sold among 1 ,600,000 people, although 

 my enquiries showed that the great majority of the population suffer 

 from fever repeatedly in each year. These figures will suffice to bring 

 home the fact that the infinite majority of the population of Dinajpur, 

 and doubtless of all other malarious districts of Bengal, are beyond the 

 reach of the one drug which will save their lives when attacked by 

 malaria, to say nothing of an infinite amount of suffering and loss, while 

 thousands of children die yearly, whose lives could be saved with abso- 

 lute certainty if quinine were readily available for their treatment. 



My object in laying stress on this fact, which is only too well 

 known, is because my enquiries have led me to believe that something 

 can and ought to be done to remedy this cruel loss of life from malaria, 

 specially among children. Some of the dispensaries do not do all they 

 might, the stock of quinine supplied being often utterly inadequate, 

 while it is occasionlly allowed to run perilously low, with the result that 

 it is not dispensed when it should be, as in one case only six drachms 

 were in hand at the time of my visit, but this is a matter for adminis- 

 trative care. Perhaps more quinine would be used if the good an outdoor 

 dispensary does was measured by the amount of quinine dispensed 

 rather than by the number of petty operations performed, but still any 

 improvement thus effected would only touch the fringe of the question. 

 What is really wanted is some system of distribution of the drug in 

 every village. I have discussed with the district postal authorities the 

 possibility of a more extended distribution of the drug through the 

 postal peons on their visits to the villages, and I am of the opinion that 

 something might be done in this direction by giving a small commission 

 to those agents in order to stimulate the sale of the pice packets. Still 

 it appears that many small villages and hamlets may not be visited for 

 weeks at a time by the postman, especially during the rainy fever 

 season when communication is at its worst, and some new agency 

 actually residing in the villages themselves is necessary if any real 

 success is to be obtained. Such an agent should be somewhat more 

 intelligent than the village chaukidar, whose burden is already quite 



