Medical Sketches of the Expedition to Egypt, from India

by Sir James McGrigor

To the atmosphere of the disease all the medical gentlemen of the army were exposed, as they saw and examined the cases in the first instance; but, except from actual contact, there never appeared to be any danger.

The sketch which I mean to give of the plague, I draw principally from the reports made to me by the surgeons of the army, and from a pretty voluminous correspondence with the gentlemen whose names have been already mentioned. From my own experience I hardly can venture to speak: it was very limited. Though I saw a great many cases, in the first stage of the disease, the number of cases which I treated throughout was very small; they were the cases which first appeared in the army, and my success in them leaves me little to boast of.

The reports and statements of the different gentlemen I have compared together, and endeavoured to reconcile them by what I myself saw of many of the cases.

I have generally given the names of the gentlemen by whom the different facts are related: I have always done this where the reports of two gentlemen disagreed.

From the sources of which I am possessed, I think I can bring forward some new facts regarding the disease, particularly in the treatment. It is much to be regretted, that no traveller, acquainted with the modern practice with mercury and the analogous remedies, ever resided in the countries where this disease is endemic.

In one circumstance, there is a very generally-prevailing opinion in regard to the plague, viz. that extremes of both heat and cold stop the progress of the contagion.

If this be true, in regard to heat, it did not appear to be so in the army in Egypt in regard to cold.

The period at which the plague raged the most was in the coldest months.

It would appear, that, in different countries and in different seasons in the same countries, the plague assumes very different appearances. The plague is seen as varied in its appearance as the different fevers described by Sydenham to prevail in different years, and under different constitutions of the air, in England.