Medical Sketches of the Expedition to Egypt, from India

by Sir James McGrigor

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.