Medico-Chirurgical Review,
[No. 25 of a Decennial Series.]
APRIL 1, TO JULY 1, 1840.
STATISTICAL REPORTS ON THE SICKNESS, MORTALITY, AND INVALIDING AMONG THE TROOPS IN WESTERN AFRICA, ST. HELENA, THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE, AND THE MAURITIUS. Prepared from the Records of the Army Medical Department and War-Office Returns. 1840.
OUR readers will of course remember the particularity with which we noticed the official documents, relating to the health of our troops in the West Indies, and our North American colonies. Such statistical records have a wider bearing than the military force on which they have been founded, and affect not only our ideas of the salubrity of particular quarters of the globe, but the very principles of medicine itself. On this account, we seize the present opportunity of recurring to a subject of such interest to the whole profession, and of carrying on our notice of these statistical reports, which, much to its credit, are emanating from the War-Office.
Major Tulloch informs us, in his usual brief Introduction, that, in the present volume, are submitted the following Reports and relative Appendices:
I. On the Sickness, Mortality, and Invaliding among the Troops serving on the Western Coast of Africa.
II. On the Sickness, Mortality, and Invaliding among those serving in St. Helena.
III. On the Sickness, Mortality, and Invaliding among those serving at the Cape of Good Hope.
IV. On the Sickness, Mortality, and Invaliding among those serving at the Mauritius.
With these would have been included a similar Report on the Health of the Troops in the Australian Colonies, but so many of the detachments there have been under the charge of civil practitioners, who do not furnish returns to the Army Medical Department, that the necessary information in regard to the prevailing diseases, cannot at present be procured. This defect, however, may yet be supplied; and in the meantime, the extreme salubrity of the climate may be estimated from the circumstance, that on the average of 20 years from 1817 to 1836 inclusive, the mortality did not exceed 14 per thousand of the force annually, whereof more than a fifth part arose from violent or accidental deaths, principally attributable to the nature of the duties on which the troops were employed. Thus the mortality from No. LXV.