86

TEN-YEAR STANDARD FOR THE NATIVE ARMY OF BENGAL, 1867 TO 1876.

[Section II.

    The following are further illustrations of the loss in four years in different stations of
Upper India, which show approximately what may be expected.

      Various causes, such as age and length of service and previous residence in an unhealthy
station, prevent such ratios from showing with accuracy what is attributable to the effects of
the localities indicated, especially in the case of invaliding. The results as regards death
should also be checked by the ten-year tables for stations, which necessarily give the estimate
for the effects of locality more perfectly than the experience of individual bodies taken for a
limited period.

Decay of a Native Regiment in Upper India illustrated.

      In Eastern Bengal, the 38th Native Infantry lost in three years 72 men, besides men who
died at home. Of these deaths, 21 were attributed to ague 19
to diarrhœa, 7 to scurvy or sloughing ulcer, 6 to spleen,
dropsy, and debility, 4 to pneumonia, 1 to phthisis, 3 to
syphilis, 10 to cholera and small-pox, and 1 to rupture of the heart.

      These were the diseases to which the decay of a Native Regiment in Northern India was
scribed. In 27 months, from November 1869 to January 1872, the 35th Native Infantry
lost 104 men, besides those who died at their homes. These deaths were returned under the
following heads: ague, 34; pneumonia, 49; diarrhœa, 8; debility, 2; rheumatism, 3;
apoplexy, 3; spleen disease, 1; phthisis, 1; suicide, 2; and drowning, 1.

      This regiment, before its removal to Meean Meer in 1869, had been stationed for several
years in Central India, and it had suffered from malarious disease. Still there was no morta-
lity in the hot season of 1869, and in the six months preceding 25th November it lost but
2 men, one from dysentery, and the other from hepatitis.

      On 25th November the men began to die, and up to May 1870 46 deaths had occurred.
From June to October the mortality ceased, and one death only occurred in the five months.
As in the previous year, when November came round, the mortality re-commenced, and from
November 1870 to May 1871 there were 45 deaths. Again, in the hot season of 1871, there
was but a single fatal case, and that a case of suicide. ^-With the setting in of the cold season,
for the third year in succession the men were stricken down, and from 23rd October till the
arrival of the regiment at Cawnpore, in February 1872, 11 deaths occurred, of which 8 were
from pneumonic disease.

      In 1874 and 1.875, while still at Cawnpore, this regiment lost 3 men only in each year.
In a tabular form these deaths stand thus:—

      What occasioned this enormous mortality in these 27 months-a loss equivalent to 18 per
cent. of the strength?

      To one acquainted with the various aspects of disease in India these reflections occur. The
commencement of the mortality was coincident with the debility produced by the great
epidemic of malaria of the evil year 1869, which made itself specially felt at Meean Meer.
The 21st Native Infantry, which had returned from Abyssinia in good health, and was cantoned
with the 35th, lost 19 men from the same class of diseases between 19th November 1869 and
22nd April 1870, and 1 man from May to November 1870. The cases seem parallel, and it
might be a fair inference that the previous medical history of the two regiments is sufficient
to account for the disparity of loss.

      But again, the commencement and termination of the mortality coincides with the com-
mencement and termination of the season in Upper India, in which contagious diseases allied to