P U N J A B F R O N T I E R F O R C E .
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many men in the native army are predisposed to sickness from under-feeding, and are longer
in recovering from illness on this account, I am well persuaded of; and I take this opportunity
of again expressing my opinion, that more latitude should be given to medical officers in
ordering nourishing food to sick sepoys.
X.Clothing.—The uniform is very good and very suitable to the service the men are
employed on.
XI.Duty.—The duty at head-quarters is not excessive. On out-post duty, however,
I understand, the men have a great deal of marching and fatigue to undergo. Nights in
bed 3.20 in 7.
XIII.Service.—No active service; no marches during the year.
XIV. Hospital.—The hospital accommodation is bad. The badness of the garrison hospital,
where, under one ill-ventilated and dark roof, the sick of three corps are treated, has been a
frequent subject of remark by successive medical officers.
XV. Sickness, mortality and invaliding. —Strength of the regiment:—
Present
614. 97
Absent
125.12
Total
740. 09
Clothing.
Duty.
Service.
Hospital.
Sickness,
mortality and
invaliding.
STATION.
PERIOD.
Strength.
TOTAL NUMBER
OF
Daily
averag
number of
sick.
PER CENT. OF STRENGTH
PER ANNUM.
From
To
Admis- sions. Deaths.
Admis
-sions. Deaths. Daily
average sick.
Head-quarters at Dera
Ismail Khan
1st January
31st Dec.
501.19 872 13 29.34 173.98 2.59 5.79
Detachment at Zam
Ditto
9th April
73.77 36 1 l.94 179.3 4. 9 2.62
2nd July
8th Oct
24th Dec. 31st Dec.
Ditto at Mungrota 24th Sep.
24th ditto
42.53 28
1.76 261.1
4.13
Ditto at Jatta 1st January
5th March
23.17
Ditto at Manji 2nd April
4th June
69.82
5
.34 40.8
.49
Ditto at Girni 8th October
31st Dec.
99.30 34
l.82 99.9
1.83
Ditto at Sheikh Budin 13th Aug.
24th Sep.
94.14
7
.42 63. 1
.44
TOTAL
614.97 982 14 31.69 159.68 2.27 5.15
Number of deaths in hospital 14; out of hospital 7; total 21; per cent. of total strength
2 . 8 4
„ i n v a l i d e d 1 8 ; „ „ 2 . 4 3
„ sent on sick leave 16; „ „ 2 . 1 6
of days spent in hospital 11,568; per admission, 11.7; per man of total strength 1 5 . 6 3
„ „ on sick leave 2,033; per man 127;
„ „
2 . 7 5
Total temporary loss of service per man of total strength
1 8 . 3 8
Principal
causes of
sickness.
Pleurisy and
Pneumonia.
XVI. Principal causes of sickness. —Intermittent fevers and their sequelæ caused by far
the greater part of the sickness. A good many of the men are disabled from sores known as
frontier sores, and which are very like to, if not identical with, the sore known in Delhi as the
Aurungzebi, and which variety of sore is to be found more or less in all those parts of the
- Punjab where the water-supply is alike saline and contaminated with drainage from towns and
villages. These sores are difficult to heal, and I believe local treatment, beyond protection from
injury, to be useless; liberal diet, and the internal use of quinine, with opium, I have found the
most successful treatment. The application of strong caustics to these sores is both useless and
barbarous. As in other parts of the Punjab where the diurnal variations are great, in the more
severe winters, pleurisy and pneumonia have been prevalent. The former disease is very fatal to
all classes of natives, and I have made many post-mortem examinations in cases where death was
so sudden as to lead to judicial inquiry, and have found the lungs glued to the parietes so as to
have little, if any play, and in many cases pericardial effusion. When the pneumonia is not
double nor complicated with extensive pleurisy, death is, I believe, rare as an immediate result
of the disease. The cause of pneumonia and pleurisy I believe to be exposure to cold. It
has always been a matter of surprise to me how natives, poorly fed and often indifferently clad,
resist exposure to cold in open barracks and flimsy tents, in which Europeans would be most
miserable. There is not a tittle of evidence to show that pneumonia is of a communicable
nature (of course, I do not allude to pneumonia as a leading feature in typhus fevers); were
it so, surely some one of the many European medical officers would ere now have been attacked,
even as such officers are attacked by the typhus fevers prevalent from time to time in our
jails. The outpost duty is a fertile source of disease in this station, and when a detachment
comes in, there is always a long array of cases of enlargement of the spleen and frontier sore to
be treated. The water-supply at some of the outposts, I understand, is most abominable.
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