PART I.
In complying with the orders of government in India, I have sincere pleasure in being able, from original documents, to present them with a correct account of the diseases and mortality which occurred in their army during the late expedition to Egypt. From the period of the first sailing of the expedition, and my appointment to the medical superintendance of it, I retained both the reports of the different medical gentlemen employed in it, and my own memorandums written on the spot. During the period in which Dr Shapter acted, and until I was re-appointed, I likewise kept states of the sick and mortality of the army, and thereafter, till the return and landing of every corps of the army at Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, or at Ceylon.
The India government has ever been peculiarly anxious about every thing that related to the health of their troops, zealous in collecting any fact and circumstance touching the causes of diseases or the means of obviating them, and most liberal in every thing that regarded the health of the sick soldier.
During an uncommonly long voyage, in a march over extensive deserts, and in a country and climate described as the most inimical to the human race, the Indian army enjoyed a considerable degree of health, and suffered but a small mortality. The causes of this I shall attempt to develope: the investigation may be useful.
The prevention of disease is usually the province, and is mostly in the power, of the military officer; the cure lies with the medical: in the expedition to Egypt very much was done by both.
The medical officers deserve my grateful thanks, and I readily acknowledge my obligations to them. For every assistance in their power, I am under not fewer obligations to the military officers. In no army, perhaps, was the health of every soldier in it more the care of every officer, from the general downwards, than in the Indian army.
It would be doing violence to my feelings not to mention how much my duty was abridged by having such a commander-in-chief as General Baird. His military abilities are well known. His extreme attention to every thing which regarded the health and comfort of the soldier, I must mention, was a principal cause of the great degree of health enjoyed by the army.
To Brigadier-General Beresford the army owes very much likewise. It is not my business to say how much all were indebted to the man, who, under circumstances the most discouraging, led the advance over the desert. In my official capacity I cannot but notice how much the British army, as well as that from India, were indebted to him, as President of the Board of Health, and as Commandant of Alexandria. The excellent police established by him gave security to the army as well as to the inhabitants; and, more than any other circumstance, tended to the exclusion of the plague from Alexandria.
The route which we took from India to Egypt is remarkable for having been that by which, in the earliest ages, the commerce of Asia, its spices, its gums, its perfumes, and all the luxuries of the East, were conveyed to Tyre, Sidon, Carthage, Rome, Marseilles, and in a word to all the coasts of the Mediterranean, from Egypt, a country rendered extremely interesting by various recollections.—The situation of the army from India has accordingly excited no common share of interest.
It penetrated Egypt by a route over the desert of Thebes, a route unattempted by any army for perhaps two or three thousand years. Independently of late circumstances, Egypt and Arabia peculiarly interest every man of science, and more particularly medical men, from the occurrence of the plague, and the ophthalmia, or the disorder of the eyes, in Egypt.
On one account the situation of the Indian army in Egypt is not a little curious. It consisted of about eight thousand men; of which number about one-half were natives of India, and the other half Europeans. We have often seen the changes effected on a European habit by a removal to a tropical or to a warm climate, but not, till now, the changes in the constitution of an Asiatic army brought to a cold climate: for such were the bleak shores of the Mediterranean to the feeble Indian.
The following Sketches I have divided into three parts. The first gives the medical history, or rather the journal, of the expedition: in the second, after attempting to assign the causes of the diseases which prevailed, some modes of prevention are offered: and in the third there is some account of the diseases.
The first division of the army intended for the expedition to Egypt, under Colonel Murray, sailed from Bombay in January, 1801. Their voyage was rather a tedious one, and the small-pox and a remittent fever broke out among them. They touched for refreshments at Mocha and at Jedda, and on the 16th May, 1801, came to anchor in Kossier-bay; the prevailing winds in the Red Sea, at this time, rendering it impossible to get so far up as Suez.
The second division of troops, (originally intended for another service,) under Colonel Beresford, sailed from Point de Galle, in Ceylon, on the 19th February; and on the 19th May disembarked at Kossier.
The last division, under Colonel Ramsay, sailed from Trincomalée, in Ceylon. They were later of arriving at Kossier, and were not able to cross the desert before July.
At Kossier there is a fort and a town, if they deserve the name. They are built of mud, and the Arabs inhabit them only at the season when caravans arrive with the pilgrims for Mecca, and with corn for that and the other ports on the opposite Arabian coast.
Like every other place described by Mr Bruce, that we have seen, we found Kossier most accurately laid down by that traveller in lat. 26° 7″, and long. 34. 04.
Kossier is situated on the western coast of the Red Sea. Here, vessels for the expedition were daily arriving, and the troops in general landed in a very healthy condition. In one column of an annexed table, intended to show the diseases and mortality of the army, will be seen the strength of the different corps employed in that service.