Page:James Thomason (Temple).djvu/185

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PUBLIC INSTRUCTION AND POLICY
177

from the Calcutta Medical College, and for some he procured a training in his own Provinces. Thus he was enabled to give a great impetus to medical dispensaries both for indoor and outdoor patients. New institutions of this kind were set up in the interior of the country. This had been done elsewhere before, but still a fresh start was made with systematic energy. Similarly great progress was made with vaccination, although the results were disappointing as regards the prevention of small-pox, because the people could not be induced to adopt universally these preventive measures. Nevertheless this prevention was undertaken with marked success in Kumáun. That mountainous region had for generations been the hot-bed of a peculiar plague and of small-pox, which were dreaded by the inhabitants as their worst scourges. The tract being confined within mountain barriers, a cordon could be formed, within which vaccination and other preventive measures would be universal. Soon the mountaineers became more and more free from these ravages, till at length they enjoyed complete immunity. All this was begun and largely carried out in Thomason's time. In later years, so firmly did these mountaineers believe their deliverance from the plague and the small-pox, their malignant deities, to be due to preventive measures including vaccination, that any failure in the arrangements would be resented, and might even lead to grave agitation. These proceedings at Kumáun have subsequently been pointed to as