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amount, and there were the usual dispensing appliances and dress-
ing instruments, but in many cases the supply of necessary drugs was
altogether inadequate and out of proportion to the actual sickness on
the garden, while too often it appeared that the stocks of medicines
accumulated from year to year with little evidence of any intelligent
attempt to use them in actual treatment.
We have been informed that at one time an attempt was made
to introduce hospitals as in Assam, but that the scheme failed as the
coolies refused to utilise them. That many coolies dislike becoming
in-patients at a hospital, we are aware, but how far the supposed
failure of hospitals in the Duars was due to defective administration
and the nature of the medical treatment offered it is impossible
to say.
GENERAL EFFECT OF MEDICAL ARRANGEMENTS.
The present system under which the coolie population of the
Duars obtains medical treatment is most inadequate. However large
or however scattered the population of a garden may be, the same staff
of a single "doctor babu" is considered as amply sufficient. Even
this staff, as we have noted, is often selected without reference to quali-
fications. When leave is taken it is rarely considered necessary to
appoint a deputy, and a "doctor bubu" may even be sent away for
months to the recruiting districts while his duties are unattended to;
or he may for part of his time be employed on clerk's duty, it being
thought or taken for granted that his medical duties are insufficient
to require his whole time service.
The origin of the mischief seems to be that, no one being res-
ponsible for the health of the coolie, the treatment of the sick as well
as sanitary arrangements are matters to which no serious attention
is paid. Deep at the root of the whole matter is the present labour
system with its lack of registration and general irresponsibility for the
life and health of the coolie.
Under it the idle and incompetent "doctor babu" has everything
in his favour, for there is no possible means of checking his work or its