A letter to the Right Honourable the Secretary at War, on sickness and mortality in the West Indies : being a review of Captain Tulloch's statistical report / by Sir Andrew Halliday.

  • Halliday, Andrew, Sir, 1781-1839.
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to the Right Honourable the Secretary at War, on sickness and mortality in the West Indies : being a review of Captain Tulloch's statistical report / by Sir Andrew Halliday. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    this matter a serious thought: you are not one to despise such counsel. With regard to temporal comforts, I must again recur to the soldier’s bedding. Their palliasses were stuffed with the crude husks of the Indian corn, a most filthy and un- wholesome material. When five years ago, I made some stir about this matter, I was at last informed by the then Secretary of the Ordnance, that “ Hair matresses had been ordered for the white troops in the West Indies.” But have they been provided ? Are the corn husks no longer in use at Barbados ? and, have the plantain leaves been laid aside at Demerara ? I hope I shall be informed that they are, but I have my doubts. From Captain Tulloch’s tables, it appears that bowel complaints are not only frequent, but most fatal among the troops situated in Barbados. How can it be other- wise, when men, women, and children are compelled to have recourse to the same open and filthy privies, where vermin are generated in millions, and often productive of most distressing and dangerous bowel complaints? Independent of the profligacy to which this leads, it showrs such a total disregard for the common decencies of humanity, and tends so effectually to do away with all feeling of self-respect, that there is scarcely any induce- ment left for either class to act well. Besides, my Lord, at Barbados these necessaries are placed at such a distance from the barracks, that when they have to be visited during the. night, or when the weather is unsettled, the individual who has risen from his bed in a state of profuse perspiration, is often so drenched with rain, that he returns shivering to his uneasy couch, and is either carried off in a day or two by acute dysentery, or is