REPORT

OF THE

SANITARY BRANCH FOR 1861.

BY

T. G. LOGAN, M.D.,

INSPECTOR-GENERAL OF HOSPITALS AND HEAD OF THE

SANITARY BRANCH.

OF THE

ARMY MEDICAL DEPARTMENT.

SIR,

I HAVE the honour to submit to you the Sanitary Divisional Report of the Army Medical Department for the year 1861.

In the corresponding document of the preceding year, the descriptive details and Sanitary conditions of the Barracks and Hospitals of the Home Quarters of the Army were represented so fully as to have exhausted the subject so far as regards the necessity of any very extended Report thereon for the present occasion; the course of the year under review not having been characterised by the execution of any generally applied Sanitary works of a primary importance, although progress was made in the fulfilment of the recommendations of the Barrack and Hospital Improvement Commission, at various Stations, and commensurately with the financial means afforded by the Government grant for the period.

The observations on the Foreign Stations of the Army will be found collated in considerable detail from the local documents, and, in one or two desirable instances, the Reports of the Principal Medical Officers are given in full.

It is again a subject of regret that the Documents of the year, for the Bengal Presidency, were not received opportunely to have come, more appropriately, under report within this volume; but a compensation has been obtained in a concise and interesting Topographical and Sanitary Sketch of the Districts forming the area of the Bengal Command, by Staff Surgeon Dr. Crawford, and in which are contained notices of such general improvements for the welfare of the Troops, to the latest, as the means in possession of this Department have afforded opportunity of offering.

Amongst the contributions to this Departmental Volume, the Review of the Progress of Hygiene, by Professor Dr. Parkes, F.R.S., is replete with interesting information.

A Paper on Typhoid Fever in India, its clinical characters, morbid anatomy, and etiological relations, by Dr. Hanbury, Sur

geon 33rd Regiment, will be perused with an advantage and, although it here appears as a reprint from a local journal, its excellence in the light of Sanitary Science may well be brought under the general cognisance of the Officers of the Department.

Dr. Inglis, Deputy Inspector-General of Hospitals (late Surgeon-Major 64th Foot), has afforded a valuable special Report on the Station of Kurrachee, where are the best of Indian Barracks (of pre-Mutiny era), and the salutary results of an effective system of Sanitary police in maintaining an unwonted state of health of his Corps, there, are strongly evidenced by him.

Dr. Munro, Surgeon 93rd Highlanders, has furnished a special Topographical and Sanitary Report on Subathoo, a lower Himalayan Station, or, more definitely, an intermediate hill site between the plains of the N.W. Provinces of India and the elevated position of Simla, or that of the Convalescent Depôt at Landour.

Dr. Scot's (79th Highlanders) Topographical and Sanitary Report on the Cantonment of Meean Meer (Lahore) follows. At the time it was written it bore augury of Sanitary evil through a cesspit system of conservancy which, it is but too probable, played no small accessory part in the deadly epidemic of Cholera which visited the European Troops there in 1861, and which led to the researches of a Special Commission, whose Report is not yet published.

The results of the first year's working of the Sanatorium at Citta Vecchia, Malta, are recorded in Surgeon-Major Mr. Matthew's Special Report of the Establishment.

The series of contributed Papers concludes with two of scientific research; one on "Carniset," a concentrated Food, by the Professors of the Army Medical School; the other on the "Ventilation" of the New Hut Barracks at Gravesend, by AssistantSurgeon Mr. Hewlett, of the Bombay Army, and Staff AssistantSurgeons Messrs. St. John Stanley, and Baynes Reed, of the British Medical Department.