264 



Dr. W. M. Haffkine. 



inoculation, the prisoners were not allowed to undergo the treatment 

 in a body, and it was resolved that only one half of them should be 

 permitted to do so. 



The manner in which that half was selected guaranteed the elimina- 

 tion of all possible errors usually inherent to observations on human 

 communities. 



The population of a jail in India is gathered into several groups, 

 the largest being the ordinary convicts divided into simple prisoners 

 and hard labour convicts; then there is a group of civil prisoners, 

 debtors \ a group of under-trial prisoners, of convict warders, of cooks, 

 bakers, men employed in the infirmary, &c. ; and a separate group of 

 female prisoners. 



On the morning of the 1st of January, 1898, in the presence of 

 Major Collie, I. M.S., and Dr. Leon, medical officers, Mr. Mackenzie, 

 the superintendent, and of all the officials of the jail, the above groups 

 were brought one after the other into the jail-yard, and asked to seat 

 themselves in rows; and after all were seated, every second man 

 without further distinction was inoculated, excepting two of them, who 

 did not volunteer for the treatment. 



From this moment the even numbers, the inoculated, were left to live 

 with the uninoculated, under conditions identical with those under 

 which they were living before. They had the same food and drink, 

 the same hours of work and of rest, shared with them the same 

 yards and buildings, &c. 



In this case fatal attacks continued to occur in the jail for thirty 

 days, during which time an almost equal number of prisoners, inocu- 

 lated and uninoculated, were discharged from jail, and thus excluded 

 from further observation. 



The average daily strength of the uninoculated who remained in the 

 jail up to the end exposed to the plague was 127 ; and of the inocu- 

 lated, 147. 



In the smaller uninoculated number, ten cases of plague occurred, 

 six of them proving fatal ; while the larger inoculated number pro- 

 duced three cases, of whom all recovered. 



In these three cases, however, in the inoculated, the character of the 

 disease was so much mitigated that the authorities of the Government 

 hospital at Parel, Bombay, where they were sent, hesitated to return 

 them as plague, and the Director-General of the Indian Medical Service, 

 who examined two of them, diagnosed them as mumps. They were 

 returned as cases of plague in order that no possibility of error in 

 favour of the inoculation should be admitted. 



The Experiment in the Dharwar Jail. 



On the third and last occasion, when the plague broke out in a jail, 

 the authorities did not feel justified in withholding the inoculation 



