Volume 2
Report on small-pox in Calcutta, 1833-34--1837-38--1843-44 : and vaccination in Bengal, from 1827 to 1844 / by Duncan Stewart.
- Stewart, Duncan, 1804-1875
- Date:
- 1844
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Report on small-pox in Calcutta, 1833-34--1837-38--1843-44 : and vaccination in Bengal, from 1827 to 1844 / by Duncan Stewart. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![[ 2 ] Bengal. It is strange that they have attracted so little of the attention of Indian Medical writers. The oversight has been doubtless owing in some degree to the partial intercourse which English Physicians have with the lower orders of the people. With few excep- tions the professional duties and avocations of Medical Officers in India bring them into acquaintance only with the Native sick in Regimental, or in Gaol Hospi- tals. In Calcutta, a few practitioners have access to the houses and families of some of the upper classes of the wealthy Hindoos, and a smaller number still in charge of Dispensaries have opportunities of becoming familiar with the prevalent diseases of the poor. But these Charities afford even to the most zealous and assiduous lover of his profession a very partial idea of the acute diseases of the country; for except in cases of accident or of Cholera, no in-door patients are received into these Institutions; and of the hundreds who apply for advice and medicine daily, all are too poor to afford the hire of conveyance thither often or regularly; besides, in dangerous illnesses, few of course could bear this. Hence also in a great measure it happens, that among many thousand patients who have applied for and received advice and medicine at the various Cal- cutta Dispensaries, since lst of January to Ist of June, not one single case of Small Pox has been seen, while the streets have been crowded every day with funeral processions, and the smoke of funeral piles on the banks of the River has tainted the morning gale for months past. The Public Dispensaries, however, furnish many instances of the horrible sequele of Small Pox, numbers](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33097288_0002_0020.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
