On preservation of health in India / by Sir Joseph Fayrer.

  • Joseph Fayrer
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On preservation of health in India / by Sir Joseph Fayrer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    /^3 6 and their habits, the animal and vegetable creation, even the diseases, differ from those he has hitherto known, and he makes acquaintance—let us hope, not in his own person—with malarial and liver disease, insolation, dysentery, cholera, and others that at times sweep over the country as destructive epidemics, w7hilst the conditions of life generally under which he exists differ from those of more northern regions. Such is to be your home and the scene of your labours it is a field that has, as yet, been only partially explored, but which offers prospect of a rich return to those who work in it. Now, to enable you to take advantage of this, health is essential; but I regret to learn that of those who- have already gone there, some have suffered, in this respect, beyond what may fairly be ascribed to climatic causes alone. It is on this account that I am here to-day, for the purpose of assuring you that health, though more precarious than at home, is not necessarily so seriously imperilled as you might suppose, if only ordinary precau- tions be taken,—to offer you, in short, some advice as to how you may preserve it, and avoid, or mitigate, whatever is injurious. But as having an important hygienic bearing on the subject, let me first say a few words on the climate, seasons, and some other matters that affect the health of Europeans generally in India. The Englishman has naturally a great power of adapting himself to altered conditions of existence—to extremes of temperature, and to climatic change. Like some of the domestic animals he has taken with him, he exists, nay, thrives, among the ice of the Polar regions, or under the vertical sun of the Torrid zone. This power of endurance is often severely tested, but the strain is sometimes due more to- himself than to his surroundings, still there can be no ques- tion that, with care, it may be much enhanced. It is re- ported of an Irish soldier that he said, in reference to the evil effects of climate on his comrades—“ They eat and they drink, and they drink and they eat, till they die, and then they write home and say it was the climate that killed
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