No. 32.-— 1886.] MEDICAL HISTORY OF CEYLON. 323 



patient over with cow-dung, oil, chunam, lime juice, and other 

 preparations from herbs, and then bury him up to the chin 

 in hot sand. 



I shall now attempt a cursory notice of the principal events 

 in the medical history of Ceylon, gathered from official 

 documents. 



Vaccination was introduced into Ceylon as early as 1802. 

 According to Bertolacci, who wrote in 1817, the population of 

 Ceylon eight or ten years prior to that date was calculated at 

 700,000. The number vaccinated between 1802 and 1812 was 

 221,082, and it is stated that the efforts of the British Govern- 

 ment to eradicate small-pox by means of vaccination were 

 so successful that for eleven years the disease did not occur 

 in Ceylon. The low-country Sinhalese, when they found by 

 experience the protective benefits of vaccination, crowded 

 into the British settlements for the purpose. The Kandyans, 

 or natives of the hill country, who had been at enmity with 

 the Portuguese, Dutch, and British, still kept aloof from 

 communication with the Maritime districts ; but, though they 

 did not acquire the direct benefits of vaccination, they were 

 free from the disease when it had been eradicated by the 

 prophylactic in the low country. They used to drive their 

 small-pox patients into the jungles of the low country. 



In 1803, Mr. Percival, an officer of the 19th regiment, 

 suggested that vaccination should be made compulsory 

 (sixty years afterwards, in 1863, it was made compulsory by 

 Sir Charles McCarthy) ; in 1837, Dr. Kinnis, of the Army 

 Medical Department, wrote a long letter to the inhabitants 

 of Ceylon on the advantages of vaccination. It was translated 

 into Sinhalese, and must have done much good in making 

 the benefits of vaccination generally known. 



The first mention of the Lunatic Asylum occurs in the 

 speech of Sir James Stewart Mackenzie, delivered before the 

 Legislative Council in 1839. Up to that time insane persons 

 had no special hospital provided for them, the common 

 jails, and for a period, the Leper Asylum at Hendala, being 



