Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c6.s2.6

c6.s2.6

Inoculation against the smallpox seems to have been universal, if not throughout, in large parts of Northern and Southern India, till it was banned in Calcutta and other places under the Bengal Presidency (and perhaps elsewhere) from around 1802-3. Its banning, undoubtedly, was done in the name of ‘humanity’, and justified by the Superintendent General of Vaccine (A vaccine (the Latin *vacca*, meaning cow) from the cow, for use in the inoculation against smallpox was manufactured by Dr E. Jenner in 1798. From then on, this vaccine replaced the previous ‘variolous’ matter, taken from human agents. Hence the method using the ‘vaccine’ came to be called ‘Vaccine Inoculation’.) Inoculation in his first report in March 1804.24