Report of the Director of Medical and Sanitary Services / [Ceylon].

  • Ceylon. Civil Medical Department.
Date:
[1933]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Director of Medical and Sanitary Services / [Ceylon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/116 (page 15)
    A waiter at Isurudisi Bakery, Colombo, which had connection with Siripina Lane, carried the infection to Wadugama on June 2, 1933, and caused an out¬ break near Neboda, which was discovered on June 30. This was the last centre of infection in the Western Province. Six cases in a family in Hill Street, Colombo, were discovered on August 11, 1933, and were due to concealment of a case that had occurred on June 16. The last case of the epidemic occurred at Avondale Road, Colombo, on August 12, 1933. Concealment and lack of prompt notification accounted for the large number of cases that occurred. Vaccination was the sheet anchor in the control of the disease. It was carried out on a large scale and the rapidity with which it was pursued at every centre accounted for the quick and complete suppression of the outbreak. The following were the numbers of vaccinators employed at three centres :—Colombo 105, Jaffna Peninsula 53, and Galle and Galle Gravets 34. The number of vaccinations done at various centres was as follows: — 1932. 1933. Colombo City 112,064 .. 149,206 Gall© . . . . • . - . . 36,162 Galle Gravets . • - • • 20,153 Ratgama, Dodanduwa, and Hikkaduwa . . -- . . 17,846 Jaffna Peninsula . • - . . 208,986 Neboda . . - 26,796 Besides the above, vaccination was carried out in the chief towns of the Island as a precautionary measure. The people readily came forward and there was no serious opposition to the campaign anywhere. The rapidity and the certainty with which the outbreak was controlled and the helpful co-operation of the people are in marked contrast with the state of affairs in Ceylon in 1755 as recounted in the following extract (kindly supplied by the Government Archivist) translated from the memorandum of instruction left by the Dutch Governor, J. G. LOTEN, for his successor: — But this work of the Tombo, Landraad, and Garden-registration has been at a stand-still nearly all the time during my presence here, owing to the smallpox which has not raged here so severely during living memory and which has depopulated the country to a greater degree than that experienced anywhere else. It is not exactly because this disease is actually or naturally fatal, but it is the behaviour of the inhabitants themselves that renders it so terrible, anyone, even their nearest blood-relations who are attacked by it being allowed to parish miserably without help or medicine; and if anyone among them is found to be of a more compassionate and helpful a nature, that is still of little avail to the sufferers, as usually, owing to unsuitable medicine and a wrong method of treatment, they have to perish all the same. Consequently it would be very desirable for this country if people here would adopt the same treatment as that practised by the natives in Java, Macassar, and elsewhere, namely of washing their sick; for one hardly ever hears of a case of failure among those natives here in Ceylon, whilst the Sinhalese who are stricken with the disease rarely ever escape; and notwithstanding our frequent efforts at persuasion and the successful examples before their very eyes when the disease was raging most ■severely, they did not follow them, giving as their excuse the reason that the constitution of their bodies was different; and much less would they be willing to submit to the use of the so very salutary and universal remedy, which having originally come from Asia and passed into several countries in Europe and even to America, has had such happy and certain results in various climates temperate as well as tropical, but this only in passing.” Note.—The salutary and universal remedy mentioned in the extract above refers to direct inoculation.