Official report on the medical topography and climate of Calcutta : with brief notices of its prevalent diseases, endemic and epidemic / by James Ranald Martin.

Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Official report on the medical topography and climate of Calcutta : with brief notices of its prevalent diseases, endemic and epidemic / by James Ranald Martin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    high, accommodates 900 men on the peace establishment and 1,602 in war. Both are damp on the ground floor. The late Inspector General Burke, described Fort William as one of the very worst of our Military Stations. “ The buildings are too crowded together, the estimate of space, and of domestic convenience has been too confined for the climate, the apartments for the men are deficient in height and ventilation.” “ From the crowding of the buildings, the height and proximity of the fortification, the radiation of heat is not only very great, but there is prevented the dissipation of those malarious vapours of which there appears to be so copious a supply from various sources in Fort William.” HOSPITALS. New Hospital for H. M.’s Troops on Dr. Burke’s plan well constructed. There is no room within the Fort for sick accommodation, and the Garrison Regimental Medical establishments are therefore placed in one of three old-fashioned buildings comprising the General Hospital. That they were built seventy years ago would seem prima facie evidence against them, and in reality they are very defective in construction, besides being surrounded by a wall sixteen feet in height, as if on purpose to obstruct ventilation. The situation too is on every account ill-chosen and incon- venient for a General Hospital. The distance from town is considerable, and the actual site is close upon the most unhealthy of our Suburbs. To one retrospective good purpose, however, the General Hospital might yet be made subservient, that of its Medical statistics since its foundation ; but the subject is unhappily, up to this day, a sealed book in Bengal. From the antiquated establishment last described, it was the anxious desire of the late Inspector General Burke, a man of talent and extended experience as a Military Surgeon, to remove the sick of Her Majesty’s Troops, and an Hospital on a suitable scale was erected on his plan and recommendation seven years ago. The new hospital is airy, commodious, and beyond all comparison superior to any hospital at the presidency; but, after having laid empty since its completion, it was recently, and for