REPORT

                                          ON THE

          STAMPING OUT OF SMALL-POX IN CALCUTTA.

                                      SECTION I.

POLICE REGULATIONS AGAINST SMALL-POX NECESSARY.

Argument for
restrictions of
Medical Police

1. In the following report I have to call attention to the fact
that very much might be done by a judicious system of Medical
Police to prevent the mortality attendant on an epidemic of small-
pox, when that scourge is allowed to make head in Calcutta.

Public attention in Great Britain has been recently strongly
directed to the advantages to be derived from restrictions being applied
to those who are for the time dangerous, in consequence of laboring
under disease which they can communicate to those around.

Sir James Simpson, President of the Public Health Section of
the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, has
published an address on the subject, and it would be well for India,
were a copy of it placed by Government in the hands of every
medical man, and every civil administrator in the country.

In the following report, I shall have to follow some parallel lines
of thought, and avail myself of illustrations similar to those which he
has made use of, and it would be impossible to introduce the subject
more fittingly than by taking the following quotation from the address
referred to:—

" The public mind has during the last two or three years become
familiarised with the idea of ' stamping out' a disease, in the instance
of rinderpest—a malady apparently spreading in this country, as
small-pox does, by contagion only; and every one well knows the
perfect success with which this affection has been lately banished
out of England, while it has also, by due care, been prevented spread-
ing to Ireland and the Isle of Man. I believe the same principle