Hospital.
Sickness,
mortality and
invaliding.
130
MEDICAL AND SANITARY REPORT OF THE NATIVE ARMY OF BENGAL.
relieved by the 29th Regiment, Punjab Native Infantry. It arrived at Mooltan on the 12th
April, having come by regular marches along the route described in the report of 1875, viz.,
by the lower ridges of the Salt Range, Shahpur, and Jhang. The detachment was healthy
on the march, and had only one sick man in hospital on arrival at Mooltan.
XIV Hospital.—The native infantry hospital at Mooltan is spacious, well-ventilated
and fairly lighted. There is a large fire-place in each wing, and fuel is supplied for heating
the building during the months of December, January and February. It is capable of
accommodating 100 patients, though supplied with only 72 cots. During the height of the epi
- d e m i c s i c k n e s s , t h e s i c k i n h o s p i t a l r o s e t o 1 2 0 , a n d e v e n t o 1 8 9 , a n d i t b e c a m e n e c e s s a r y t o
pitch tents in the hospital compound; for such numbers provision could not be made in a
permanent building, nor indeed is it necessary, as the fever is generally mild, and the sick do
exceedingly well in tents. The left wing is very indifferently lighted, and is in consequence
ordinarily but little used. The lavatory arrangements are complete.
XV. Sickness, mortality and invaliding—Strength of the regiment—
Present
6 0 8 . 6 1
Absent
9 1 . 4 8
Total
7 0 0 . 0 9
STATION.
PERIOD.
Strength.
TOTAL NUMBER
OF
Daily
average number of sick.
PER CENT. OF STRENGTH
PER ANNUM.
From
To
Admis-
sions. Deaths.
Admis
- sions. Deaths. Daily
average sick.
Head-quarters and Right
Wing, Mooltan
1st Jan. 1876 11th April 1876 404.46 84
7.72 74.52
1.90
Left Wing, Talagang
Ditto
18th Mar. „ 280.23 47
5.53 78.69
1.97
Left Wing on march to
Mooltan
19th Mar. „ 18th April „ 243.08 5
2.95 31.36
1 . 2 1
Head-quarters, Right and
Left Wings, Mooltan
12th April „ 31st Dec. „ 582.69 1,697 4 28.36 403.75
. 9 5 4.86
TOTAL
608.61 1,833 4 24.34 301.17 . 9 5 3.99
Number of deaths in hospital 4; out of hospital 1; total 5; per cent. of total strength
.71
„ i n v a l i d e d 2 3 ; „ „
3.28
„ s e n t o n s i c k l e a v e 1 ; „ „ .14
„ o f d a y s s p e n t i n h o s p i t a l 8 , 8 8 8 ; p e r a d m i s s i o n 4 . 8 4 ; p e r m a n o f t o t a l s t r e n g t h
12.69
„ „ o n s i c k l e a v e 2 0 9 ; p e r m a n 2 0 9 ; „ „
.30
Total temporary loss of service per man of total strength
12.99
Principal
causes of
sickness.
XVI. Principal causes of sickness. —The admissions into hospital have been more numer
- ous during the year 1876 than in any previous year since the regiment was raised, not except
- i n g t h e t h r e e y e a r s i t w a s s t a t i o n e d a t P e s h a w a r . T h i s p r e p o n d e r a n c e i s e n t i r e l y c a u s e d b y
malarious fevers of the ordinary intermittent type, which have furnished 1,546 admissions out
of a total of 1,833 from all causes. The fever was, as a general rule, of mild type, and readily
amenable to treatment: the disease was not directly fatal in any case, and the mean duration of
the treatment was less than four days. There were exceptions to this generally mild character,
in which the fever resisted for a long period all medical treatment, and subsided only on the
occurrence of critical evacuations from the bowels, or the establishment of moderately severe
dysentery. In some cases the fever, occurring for the first time at the commencement of the
cold season, assumed a low type, persisted for week after week, and produced extreme exhaustion,
which in one case prepared the way for a rapidly fatal attack of pneumonia. The cinchona
febrifuges (cinchonine and cinchonidine), with which most of the cases were treated, answered
admirably, exhibiting a therapeutic power but little inferior to quinine: this was especially
true of cinchonidine, which appeared to me to be superior to cinchonine. From what I have
observed this year from the inundation of the Walli Mahomed canal in causing the out
-break of fever in the regiment, which was coincident, not with the actual flooding, but with
the drying up of the inundated tract under a powerful sun, I am persuaded that very great
importance must be attached to the annual overflow of the rivers Ravi and Chenab in the
production of the fever of the district. Most alluvial clays are rich in organic débris, and
this of Mooltan does not, I believe, form any exception. As suggested by Dr. Daly at
page 124, Sanitary Report for 1874, the jungle tracts along the banks of the Chenab,
which are annually flooded for several miles around, and which abound in rotting vege
- tation, must be ample store-houses of the malarial poison. It is not necessary to look
so far for the source of the malaria to account for the fever of 1876, but only to the
inundation of the Walli Mahomed canal, in the immediate neighbourhood of the regimental
lines. In concluding this subject, it is desirable to point out that the average annual rain
- fall of the district has risen during the last five years from 2½ to 5 inches per annum;
and an accurate observer, Dr. Watson of the 19th Bengal Cavalry, has maintained in his report
of this station, that the amount of fever is greatly influenced and determined by the amount
of rainfall for each year. Still, defects in the natural surface and sub-soil drainage appear to
be mainly accountable for the autumnal fever of Mooltan. Inundations from the great canals