Contributions to the military medical statistics of the Bombay Presidency / by John Kinnis.

  • Kinnis, John.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Contributions to the military medical statistics of the Bombay Presidency / by John Kinnis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    foundations, for the tents of commissioned officers, have been added to every staging pendal on the Poona road.] The sites selected are generally well supplied with water, &c., and too distant (generally about two miles) from the more popu- lous villages to be likely to tempt the soldier, fatigued with his early march, to seek in them gratifications prejudicial to health. Larger pendals, capable of accommodating the wing of a regiment, were recommended by the late Inspector-General Loinsworth, in May 1840, to be erected on the very spots now selected, with one exception. The ascent of the Bhore Ghaut, an irregular and steep mountain pass, five miles and a-half in length, on the second day from Panwell, is generally very trying to weakly men, some of whom often require to be brought from it in carts or pa- lanquins, to Kandalla, where the day's halt occurs. At Panwell, the country is little above the level of the sea, and the soil alluvial, presenting, at low water, an extensive surface of slime and mud. From Panwell, through the Coucan, to the foot of the Ghauts, a distance of twenty-four miles, the road is good, there are several stone bridges over the rivers, and the scenery is varied and beau- tiful. That of the Ghauts themselves is magnificent, and, on at- taining the summit, we no longer experience the hot enervating atmosphere of the Coucan. Karlee Rock Temples.—A little beyond Kandalla, the country becomes again level, and, at the distance of seven miles, are the Budhist rock temples of Karlee, which well repay the fatigue of a ride and walk to them ; for you can go part of the way only on horseback from the travellers' bungalow. From Poonowla, within eleven miles of Poona, there is a marked increase of population, cultivation, and other indications of the approach of a large town. Basalt appears, soon after leaving Panwell, in some places naked, in others covered with a thin argillaceous stratum, mixed with fragments of the rock. The road is, in general, very good ; and at intervals of about twelve miles are travellers' bungalows, built by Government, where rest and refreshments may be procured at a very moderate price. KlRKEE. a. Station.—Kirkee is the only station in the Presidency provided with permanent accommodation for a regiment of Euro- pean cavalry.* It covers an area of some four square miles, and * This account of Kirkee is taken chiefly from a Medico-Historical Abstract of the first year's service, in the East Indies, of Her Majesty's J4th Light Dra- goons, by J. W. Mofliit, lisq., then surgeon of that corps, which appeared in the Transactions of the Medical and Physical Society of Bombay, vol. v. 1842.