Report on the climate and principle diseases of the African station; compiled from the documents in the office of the Director-General of the Medical Department, and from other sources: in compliance with the directions of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty / Under the immediate direction of Sir William Burnett. By Alexander Bryson.

  • Bryson, Alexander, 1802-1869.
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the climate and principle diseases of the African station; compiled from the documents in the office of the Director-General of the Medical Department, and from other sources: in compliance with the directions of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty / Under the immediate direction of Sir William Burnett. By Alexander Bryson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    followed out with safety or satisfaction on the coast;—and they have not unfrequently, after considerable experience and much disappointment, been abandoned for others which admit of less severe modes of practice. This remark more particularly applies to blood-letting, and the administration of mercury. Some important information, in a medical point of view at least, has been furnished relative to the period of incubation in fever: this, the nature of the service, from the exposure of men for short periods of time to the exciting r causes within certain definite localities, occasionally affords peculiar advantages of marking with precision. With regard to the tables, it is necessary to state that they have nothing whatever to do with the general statis- tical tables now in course of preparation; they have been furnished partly as a requisite appendage to the Report, in consequence of the increased desire and frequent application for this species of information, and partly with the view of showing the true rate of mortality on the station for a long series of years; those previously published, although replete with much valuable information, (in which these are deficient) having unavoidably been extracted from data which included the force on the Cape station; and being only for a limited period of years, give but an imperfect view of the subject. It is greatly to be regretted that from a want of time, it has not been possible to make any extended remarks respecting them; although in a statistical point of view this is of minor importance so long as the numbers are correct, and it is believed in the present instance they are as nearly so as possible, the deaths and the force of each vessel having been