Observations on the means of preserving the health of troops, by selecting healthy localities for their cantonments / by Edward Balfour ; read by Joseph Hume ... before the Statistical Society of London, on the 19th of May 1845.

  • Balfour, Edward, 1813-1889.
Date:
[1845]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the means of preserving the health of troops, by selecting healthy localities for their cantonments / by Edward Balfour ; read by Joseph Hume ... before the Statistical Society of London, on the 19th of May 1845. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Appendix (C.) Mountain regions and tracts of table-land are to be met with in most of the islands and continents within the tropics, where, from the elevation above the plains, the climate, temperature, and even the character of the diseases bear a strong resemblance to those of the temperate countries of Europe; and from the experience we have already acquired, these highlands promise to furnish the means of preventing sickness among Europeans, by enabling us to station them above the heats and diseases of the plains. The height that is requisite to escape the diseases and the epidemics that occur with such intensity in warm climates, is uncertain, and it varies probably in different parts of the same country. “ At Sierra Leone, the barracks, though at the height of 400 feet, have frequently been the site of greater mortality than the lowest situation in town; and when a body of men was removed to the village of Wilberforce, at an elevation of 600 feet, with a view of keeping them free from fever, .they suffered even to a greater extent than the shipping in the harbour.”—(Report, 1840.) “The instances of Fort St. George at Tobago, Morne Fortuna at St. Lucia, and Morne Bruce at Dominica, demonstrate that mere elevation to the height of 600 or 800 feet, instead of securing a healthy position, seems rather to have a reverse tendency.” The records of the mortality at Stony Hill, in Jamaica, where the mortality with reference to the average of deaths from fevers, in the whole island, has been as 101’9 to 70'5, show that an elevation even of 1,360 feet is insufficient to secure an immunity from the remittent fevers of Jamaica.” But, remarks Colonel Tulloch, “the researches of Humboldt on this subject have tended to establish that the yellow fever of the West Indies is never known beyond the height of 2,500 feet.” (Report 1838.)—In the East Indies, however, this degree of elevation does not seem sufficient to secure the troops from attacks of fever, nor from the scourge of epidemic diseases. In Berar, Hyderabad and Candeish, and near the Sautpoora range of mountains, table-lands that range in altitude from 1,200 to ^,000 feet above the level of the sea, the fevers are so deadly at certain seasons, that few who attempt to pass through them escape; and while Seringapatam, which has 2,300 feet of elevation, was garrisoned, the natives of the country, as well as the European strangers, suffered so much from remittent fevers, that the fort was abandoned, and the French Rocks, six miles distant, now forms the station. It has been the same in Ceylon. Remittent fever occurred at Kandy in 1824, as an epidemic, and cut off a fourth of the garrison; and so many men were carried off by the same disease at the station of Badulla, that the place has not been occupied by European troops since 1832. The annual mortality there was 97‘1 per 1,000 of mean strength, and 59*3 of this, was from fever alone; yet Kandy is 1,676 and Badulla is 2,100 feet above the sea’s level. At 3,000 feet above the sea, amongst the passes leadino- to the Neilgherry Hills, the agent that occasions fever is so powerfuF, that few Europeans who have slept a niglit in them have escaped an attack, and of those attacked, almost all have died. It is the same with cholera ; a limited degree of elevation seems to have little effect in lessening its frequency or its intensity, even amongst the indigenous inhabitants of the country; for it often spreads with sweeping violence among Europeans and natives, in the stations in the Dekhan, which range from 1,600 to 2,000 feet above the ocean’s level; and in 1819-20 and 1832 it also occurred among the Europeans stationed at Kandy in Ceylon, which is 1,676 feet high. Even at 2,400 feet in height above the level of the sea-, at Bangalore, in the Mysore