Mr Bellars, about this time, joined the 86th regiment at Ghiza; he took charge of the sick, and was attacked in the same manner as Mr Paton had been, and he likewise suffered most severely by it for several months.
Dr Whyte, who fell a martyr to his zeal in the investigation of the history of the plague, from a residence of some years in the Levant and some time in Egypt, had good opportunities of being acquainted with the diseases of that country, informed me, that, by making those under his charge, frequently during the day, wash the eyes with cold water in the season of the ophthalmia, he never failed in preventing the disease. He instanced particularly the sailors of the transports, of about one thousand of whom he had the medical charge. The captains of the different transports carried Dr Whyte’s preventive instructions into execution; and, though the disease raged both in the army and the navy, few of the sailors of the transports had it. By an attention to this mode of prevention, and in the season when the ophthalmia prevails most, making the soldiers wear something over the eyes, I think we should have the prospect of passing a second campaign, or season in Egypt, with less loss from ophthalmia.
GENERAL REMARKS ON THE DISEASES.
I have dwelt a considerable time on the two endemics, the plague and ophthalmia, the only diseases which we found peculiar to Egypt; and there do not many more diseases remain to detain us.
We come next to a class including several diseases, and which are usually described separately: but, I am at a loss how to disunite them, as they occur all of them in India, and as they have for the most part appeared in the Indian army in Egypt. The diseases are fever, hepatitis, and dysentery; and, as I have for the most part seen them, there exists among them a most intimate and natural connection. For a long time, the same causes appeared indifferently to produce them: there was a frequent transmutation of these diseases one into another, and in the three diseases we succeeded by a similar treatment. In offering a few remarks, however, I will preserve a distinction, and speak of these diseases separately. Before entering on them I may remark, that the effects of the solo-lunar influence, so remarkable in fever hepatitis and dysentery in India, were in Egypt likewise very observable. In the treatment of these diseases the practitioner found his account in attending to the periods of the moon; at the full and the change, paroxysms would frequently supervene, if not anticipated; and, at these periods, convalescents would frequently suffer a relapse.
OF FEVER.
The fever which we had in Egypt, at different stations and in different seasons of the year, assumed various types. That which, on the outset, prevailed among the Bombay Sepoys, was remittent. At Ghenné, the fever in the 10th regiment was continued; but it very often terminated in hepatitis. At Ghiza, we have said that we suspected contagion as the cause, at first; but, in the end, the disease was clearly kept up by marshy effluvia on Rhoda Island. It assumed a remittent, and sometimes an intermittent, form, when brought down to Rosetta; and many of the cases terminated in dysentery. At El Hammed, a majority of the fevers which occurred were intermittents; but several remittents occurred, and a few cases which had some resemblance to typhus. After October, fever was a disease of rare occurrence. In the last general return for November, fifty cases appear, of which thirty-four were natives of India. The last return in December is much the same, the native corps having a majority of the cases.
In the last return of January there appear, of continued fever, twenty-two cases; twelve of whom were Europeans. Of intermittents there were thirty-two cases, and sixteen of them were Europeans. In the general report of the 26th of February the total of fever in the army is only twenty-three, and of them, only six are natives. On the 26th of April, we had only fourteen cases, of which three were natives. In May, fever did not appear in the reports.