Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c6.s2.9

c6.s2.9

It is possible that there were some areas in India where inoculation did not prevail. This, of course, is a matter for enquiry. But wherever it did, it appears to have been universal over a whole tract. After the imposition of British rule in Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, areas of Madras Presidency, etc., this situation seems to alter. According to the Superintendent General of Vaccine Inoculation, a section of the people, either ‘from indigence’ or ‘from principle’, did not any longer (*circa* 1800) receive the inoculation.²⁶ Those who did not receive it ‘from principle’ seem to have been the Europeans in Calcutta, etc. Partly this may have been due to the greater mortality (i.e. one in sixty or seventy, as indicated above) amongst them. Further it may have also resulted from the persistence of Christian theological objections to any inoculation amongst them.²⁷