No.
Extract from the Proceedings of the Government of India, in the Home Department
(Sanitary),—under date Simla, the October 1878.
READ—
A letter from the Sanitary Commissioner with the Government of India, No. 515, dated
the 3rd September 1878, submitting the two undermentioned volumes of Returns
and Report prepared by Surgeon-Major J. L. Bryden, M.D., Statistical Officer to
the Sanitary Commissioner with the Government of India.
(1).—Volume IV.—Annual Returns of the European Army of India and of the Native
Army and jail population of the Bengal Presidency from 1871 to 1876.
(2).—Volume V.—Report on the statistics of the European Army of India and of the
Native Army and jails of Bengal to the end of 1876, and also the history of
epidemic cholera in India in 1875 and 1876.
RESOLUTION.
THESE two volumes of sanitary returns and memoranda are in continua-
tion of the three volumes which were prepared in 1874. The tables for six
years, 1871 to 1876, which are contained in volume IV, have appeared as
appendices to the annual reports of the Sanitary Commissioner with the Govern-
ment of India, for those years. They embrace statistics for the European
troops of all three Presidencies, and for the native troops and jails of the
Bengal Presidency. These tables represent much annual labour, and their
value for future reference will be great and lasting. They form a complete
record of sickness and mortality among the communities concerned. In
future, commencing from the year 1877, these tables will, it, is understood,
include not only all European troops, but all the native troops and all the
jails of India. The Government of India consider that a collection of data of
this kind, as affording material for inductions and generalizations on most
important subjects, will prove of great value.
2. Volume V, cited in the preamble, contains a series of short reports on
the European soldiers, native soldiers and prisoners, with a separate report on
cholera, each subject being illustrated by summaries and other arrangements
of figures. The facts put forward in these reports have much practical value,
especially those bearing on. European soldiers, viz ., the diseases which prove
most fatal to them at different ages and in different Presidencies, the influence
of age and Indian residence on mortality and invaliding, how each affects
the results, and how the two act together. In fact, there is hardly any point
in connection with sickness and mortality among British soldiers in India on
which information is likely to be wanted, which is not taken up and discussed
with a thorough knowledge of the facts.
3. The statistics set forth in these reports afford satisfactory evidence
of the results which attention to sanitary measures has already effected
among the British troops and among prisoners in jail. For instance, the death-
rate of the European army in India averaged only 17.62 per mille per annum
during the five years 1871-75, as compared with 20 per mille, which the Army