Cholera in Jamaica / copy of a letter from C. Macaulay esq., Assistant Secretary to the Board of Health, to F. Peel esq., Under Secretary of State.
- Great Britain. General Board of Health.
- Date:
- 1853
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Cholera in Jamaica / copy of a letter from C. Macaulay esq., Assistant Secretary to the Board of Health, to F. Peel esq., Under Secretary of State. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![The lower barrack-rooms are invariably worse ventilated than the upper ones ; and yet, if one set stand more in need of free aeration than the other, it is certainly the former, considering that, as a general rule, the ground floor apartments are always most insalubrious. For any room to be properly ventilated, there must be suitable openings for the admis- sion of fresh air, as well as others for the escape of the foul; the same openings will not answer for both purposes. Moreover, the former should be near the floor, and the latter as near the ceiling as possible. Besides, therefore, having all the doors jalousied, the plan adopted in the hospital of the Penitentiary at Kingston (see p. 45), of having grated apertures through the wall, on a level with the floor, is a good one. In short, what- ever serves to keep up a continual moderate perflation of air in an apartment where many sleep together, is necessary for the maintenance of health, in a tropical climate; always provided that the perflation is so regulated, as not to cause a chilling of the surface. This may always be easily eff^ected by breaking the force of the stream of air, when this is too great, by covering the apertures for the entrance of the air with gauze or metallic gauzework. On the roofs of some barracks there are ventilators; in others there are none. Occa- sionally they have actually been boarded up, as if they had been deemed of no use! They are more frequent upon hospital, than upon barrack, buildings; one evidence, among many others, of the common fallacy, that thorough ventilation is more needed for the sick than for the weU. In one spacious barrack, which has not been occupied of recent years, I observed several large grated openings or hatches, communicating directly, and with( ut any shaft, between the upper and lower rooms. These had been made doubtless for ventilation; but there had been no provision to prevent the foul res])ired air, from the men below, passing at once into the upper ward. The hint had doubtless been taken from shipboard. In those days, the soldiers were swung in hammocks, sometimes two or three deep, in barrack-rooms, as between decks. It was not till the year 1827, that beds were provided for the soldiers. With such a state of things, taken in connexion v/ith the other pernicious agencies at work upon the health of the soldiers, can we wonder at the frightful mcrtality in former years among the troops in Jamaica and other West India islands .'' The whole structural arrangements are sometimes most objectionable, from the foun- dation upwards. Take, for example, the barrack and other buildings at Fort Augusta. They have not been used for several years past. They stand upon a low fiat tongue of land, which projects into Kingston Harbour on its west side. The ground being only the sandy beach, Avater is come to at within a foot of the suriTice; and, every here and there, it is riddled with crab-holes. After heavy rain the whole barrack-yard becomes little better than a pool, until the water sinks into the loose sand, where the foot will sink ankle-deep. Bricked or stone pathways lead from one part of the yard to another. No wonder, then, that several of the buildings, having been put down without a preliminary secure founda- tion, are now leaning over and giving way. Those situated immediately within the garrison walls are green with damp, and their floors are rotting away; the flooring had been laid down within a few inches of the wet sand. Their ventilation is of course most defective ; in this respect, the stables are much better than the rooms provided for the men. The lower barrack-room must have been a place of suffocation; it is low in the ceiling, dai'k, and uncomfortable. The top of the windows is at least two feet from the ceiling, and they have solid wooden shutters. The officers quarters also are most unsuitable for a hot climate ; no air can pass directly through them ; and the rooms on the ground floor of the building, and which were occupied by the non-commissioned officers, are little better than prison cells; so gloomy and so close they are. It is worthy of passing notice that the house of the com- manding officer stands, about the centre of the barrack-yard, on a small plot of ground which has been artificially raised six or eight feet above the level of the yard. Why was not some such plan followed with the men's quarters ? Not less defective than those of the barrack-rooms are the arrangements of the hospital. It seems to have been altogether overlooked, in the construction of these buildings, that there must be provided means of escape for the foul air as well as for admitting the pure. Here, as elsewhere, militarv hospitals are generally very gloomy; they are unnecessarily dark and cheerless. As a proof of the extreme humidity of Fort Augusta, the powder barrels in the magazine require to be kept a foot or two above its terraced floor; and the utmost difiS- culty is experienced in keeping the arras in the armoury from rusting. If humidity is a predisponent or favouring cause of disease, we cannot be surprised at the unhealthiness of this station. An immense amount of treasure must have been spent on the fortifications; but, doubtless, the expense was far less than that which was occasioned by the sickness and mortality, which were continually going on among the troops when quartered there. That the faulty and defective ventilation of barrack-rooms had much to do with the fatality of the cholera among the troops, cannot be questioned; it is emphatically alluded to in several of the military reports. At Port Royal, the evil is made worse by the very in- judicious arrangement of the buildings,—which, instead of being separate and detached,*form three sides of a narrow quadrangle. At Kingston and Up Park Camp, until the want of a jalousied verandah on the north or land side of the barracks is supplied, no proper venti- lation can ever be effected. At Spanish Town, the construction and arrangelnents are altogether much better. The lower or basement floor is not used as a dormitory for the men; the flrst barrack-floor is thus raised well above the ground. Then, there is a jalousied verandah on the rear, as well as the front, side of the building. Some alterations are](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24751303_0129.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
