The actual amount of mortality produced by pestilential effluvia from the soil has never been accurately calculated in those countries where they are most severe. No bills of mortality or registers of deaths are kept, as in this country, in connection at least with the natives. But enough is known to shew that the amount is prodigious.
Tables are kept of the deaths occurring among the soldiers belonging to this country, serving on foreign stations, and they amply shew that the mortality is frightfully greater in those countries infested with these effluvia, and with the diseases which these effluvia are wont to excite, than at home—and as they are the chief agency of an unwholesome character, known to prevail in these regions, it is not unfair to attribute to them, in a general manner at least, a very great proportion of the excessive mortality.
The following extract, from an official return, will shew the greater mortality among the military when serving in the British Colonies than when stationed at home—
Official return of the mortality among officers and soldiers in the several British Colonies, chiefly for the seven years from 1820 to 1826, shewing the annual deaths out of ten thousand men.
| Great Britain (1824 and 1826), out of 10,000 there died per annum, | 144 |
| Mauritius, | 240 |
| Madras Civil Service in 1820, | 600 |
| Ceylon, soldiers on the island, | 1328 |
| West Indies, | 701 |
Such is the fearful mortality which occurs among our soldiers stationed in some of our colonies, where effluvia of a pestilential character exhale from the ground. In Ceylon, where terrestrial effluvia are known to prevail, the number of deaths of our soldiers is more than nine times that which occurs among those who are stationed in Great Britain.
The immediate cause of that frightful mortality is the malignant fever, the chief agent in whose production, again, is the pestilential atmosphere, rendered such by terrestrial effluvia, and not by the presence of specific contagious poisons, as defined at page [105], assisted, perhaps, by other hurtful influences, such as, the intemperate habits which new comers in those colonies frequently adopt, the great heat of the climates, operating with particular force upon those accustomed to the more temperate climate of England.
This pestilential fever, the product of effluvia from the soil, commits such mortality among our gallant soldiery, as throws into insignificance the carnage attendant on active warfare, as renders that, even in the field of battle, comparatively of little moment.
Men in action may fall fast around; whole lines, nay columns of living humanity, its boldest samples, in one brief moment may be hewn down; still, as such carnage can last but a few hours of the day only, or, if protracted, a few days at most, the work of death is inconsiderable, compared with that effected by pestilential effluvia in many situations, operating both night and day, from day to day, and from year to year, unceasingly.