ABSTRACT
Literature on smallpox epidemics in colonial India and particularly in Bengal is coming up in abundance. Much has been written on the subject from various standpoints. Some scholars have emphasized the killer disease, keeping in mind the medical encounter of the physicians as also the medical research undertaken by the colonial masters, 1 while others have examined the phenomenon in a socio-historical perspective. 2 Some again have looked into the epidemic in terms of the emergence of colonial medicine in India. 3 Still others have engaged the scourge to address the question of vaccination in an uninitiated society. 4
