There are only twenty cases in the last return of April, and these cases are equally divided between the Europeans and Indians.
At the time of embarkation the number was even less than the above.
The disease was more frequently met with among the European artillery, and in the 61st regiment, than in any other corps. Among the native corps, the Bengal battalion had more of the disease than any other. I made inquiry, but could find no reason that could with probability account for this.[8]
I have continued longer on the subject of dysentery than was at first my intention. I will confess, that I think it is a subject on which I could with more propriety speak than on any other. My opportunities of seeing the disease have been no common ones. Rarely, I believe, has it fallen to the lot of an individual to see so very many cases of one disease in such a diversity of climate and situation. In the 88th regiment, during the course of upwards of ten years, I saw the same men the subject of this disease on the continent of Europe, in America, in both extremities of Africa, and in India. Of late, it has afforded me not a little amusement to review my notes as well as my journals of practice in this disease, in all these quarters.
I have now both given some account of the endemic diseases which we met with in Egypt, and offered a few remarks on those diseases which were most prevalent in the army. They are the diseases which constantly prove the most fatal to an army in India. The few which now remain, or (if I may be allowed the expression) the minor diseases, will not long detain us.
PNEUMONIA AND RHEUMATISM
I shall speak of conjointly. In the symptoms or treatment we could not observe any difference from the same diseases as they occur in Europe. If these diseases were less violent than we have seen them in Europe, they had more of the inflammatory, diathesis than in India.
It was not till after the army had been sometime in Lower Egypt, that either of these diseases appeared.