Volume 2

Public health: a popular introduction to sanitary science : being a history of the prevalent and fatal diseases of the English population from the earliest times to the close of the war of the French revolution in 1815 / by William A. Guy.

  • Guy, William A. (William Augustus), 1810-1885.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Public health: a popular introduction to sanitary science : being a history of the prevalent and fatal diseases of the English population from the earliest times to the close of the war of the French revolution in 1815 / by William A. Guy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    6. Quarters, hospitals, and camping grounds were fre- quently changed. 7. Nitrous fumigation was constantly practised. Lamps used for this purpose were kept constantly burning in the observation-ruoms, and in those from which the plague cases had come. Vessels containing materials for the fumigation were also placed under the beds, and in the corners of the rooms. When the stock of nitre was exhausted, marine salt was substituted for it. By means such as these the plague, which was deemed to have been very prevalent in the season that ended June, 1801 (the period from November or Decem- ber of one year, to June of the following, being the recognised cycle of the disease), was so held in check, that it proved fatal to only 38 European, and 127 Indian soldiers. That the season of 1801 was a bad one for the plague, may be inferred from certain statements to be found in Sir Robert Wilson’s history. The Mamelukes, he tells us, had suffered severely, sixty thousand people having died of the plague in Upper Egypt, while forty thousand were attacked by it in Cairo ; and he learnt from an in- tercepted letter written by General Belliard, that, in six days, one hundred and fifty soldiers had died of the plague in Cairo, and his wife and three servants in forty- eight hours. We also learn that the disease raged so violently at El Arish, as to reduce the native Egyptian garrison of 4000 to 1500 in less than a month. Of the mortality inflicted by the plague and by other diseases on the British army that landed at Aboukir, we have no accounts in the works of Wilson and Walsh • but there are many allusions to the excessive prevalence of sickness among the troops. On one point of special interest in reference to the plague, and the causes which produce and promote it,