OCTOBER.
In the beginning of this month, the encampment was moved from one to five miles distance from Rosetta. The hospitals were gradually removed also from hence. As the men recovered they were sent to a convalescent camp, intermediate both to Rosetta and the general encampment, and precautions were taken to prevent the men from intermingling with the inhabitants of Rosetta.
Thatched regimental hospitals were built in the camp; and, though in the middle of a desert, the sick soldier had a warm, comfortable, and well-ventilated, apartment, and was liberally provided with every thing conducive to his recovery. Early in the month, the garrison of Damietta joined the army. The 86th regiment were healthy and suffered less from ophthalmia than any European corps of the army. About the end of the month, this corps was sent to Ghiza, and the detachments in garrison there were ordered to join their respective corps.
The temperature of the air became sensibly lower than in the former month, the extremes being from 69° 50´ to 80°. The medium was from 70° to 77°. The westerly was still the prevailing wind, and it often blew very fresh. The atmosphere, towards the end of the month, was very cloudy; and, though we had no rain during the month, it seemed often to threaten it. Owing to the very strict precautions taken, little plague occurred during the month.
From the time the sick of the 88th regiment were separated, and from regulations regarding cleanliness and fumigation being rigidly adhered to, the progress of the contagion was effectually suppressed in that regiment. The European corps still continued to suffer from hepatitis and dysentery, while the number of cases of ophthalmia, and the great degree of violence in which this disease was now seen, were really alarming.
During the month, a case of the plague appeared in the 61st regiment. He had been a patient in the regimental hospital in Rosetta, and caught the disease from straggling through the town. The only other case which occurred was a follower of the commissariate department.