The principal diseases of India, briefly described : with hints on the duties of medical officers in that country / by Charles Alex. Gordon.

  • Gordon, Charles Alexander, 1821-1899.
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principal diseases of India, briefly described : with hints on the duties of medical officers in that country / by Charles Alex. Gordon. 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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    arriving in the country^ appear to be weeded of all the delicate men they contain; any predisposition to visceral disease that had existed^ being roused into a state of activity by the change of climate. On the other hand^ it would also appear as if nature had endowed some persons with constitutions^ to the health of which an Indian climate is conducive; it being well known that many people^ who are con- stantly invalids at home^ become stout and robust after residing in India for a short time. It is generally supposed in England that it is only the drunken and the dissipated among whom the great mortality in India occurs; while it is as univer- sally imagined that water drinkers are almost completely exempt from disease. Such were the ideas entertained by me before going to Bengal^ and I was therefore totally unprepared to find our steady, sober, and well behaved recruits attacked by disease and die; while the greatest blackguards, those who were always drunk or in the guard-room, possessed comparatively good health. The only way in which this circumstance can be accountedfor is, that no weak man can be a drunkard, at least at the age at which recruits generally enter the service, and that our most dissipated men were therefore also the strongest and most capable of resisting disease.