on this east eide and higher ground. They are of course in their first year too young to produce all the benefit. I anticipate, and I was anxiously waiting the advent of clioiera this

trees

am surprised at the discovery that since last when the cholera left us, intermittent ft-rfer (ague,) ceased from infesting this hospital on the bare

autumn, when I

September had

never

roclc. I ain now doing what should have hospital was built, and I am certain that

been done before the barracks in India or

no

in any hot climates are safe without, it, i. e., deep subsoil draining it. I find, whar, I expected to find, a mixture of rock hard ' Morum* as marble, and disintegrated spongy rock called here that can be crumbled by the hand : the former generally lying: below the latter and preventing the sinking into the bowels of the earth of the moisture which it will hold tenaciously for months, and which gives out its quota of noisome exhalationt of carbonic acid to the night and the collected human bodies in the nearest wards of the hospital. I hope by the cutting of deep trenches to let the heat extract the poison?the trenches will be sloped, off the rainfall and

carry

coining

prevent

its

sun so

lodging during

and as

to

the

monsoon.

I need not write more, unless to say that as I only took command of the Poona Division last year, and the troops having been changed just previously, I am unable to pet. more than tradition of similar unhealfchiness of this Wanowrie Hospital which I hope to alter, or at all events to mitigate ; and, I give Surgeon-Major Moffit's?an able and untiring officer, of the loth ago

by

Regiment?statement of the men attacked 8 months hospital while under treatment for other

cholera in

men attacked in the same wards with ague while under treatment for local affections since that time.

diseases, and also of

Cholera.?7 men, SANITARY NOTES IN POONA.

J3y v

Lord Mark Keer,

j

Major- General, Commanding

Toona

Division.

I

bring to professional notice the seemingly mysterious generation

remarkable of fever and

a

^ instance of cholera in certain localities, the present case being one in which these two scourges have chosen, what I maintain to be, one of their most favorite breeding dens. Ir. is not the ruined, weed-covered, and slimy tank, nor the foul looking pond put to foul uses and surrounded by hovels with a swarming population?not these, kissed by the sun beams which draw up their poison to the upper regions of air, but it is the bare, and, to all appearances, tempting the Engineer by its pretty elevation, and the Medical Officer by the absence of vegetation,

dry rock, tempting and, as I equally with

maintain, requiring often deep draining at least the more unwholesome looking swamn. Last year cholera visited Poona, and, neglecting Wanowrie and

alone.

attacked

Situated

on

some

sup-

palatial barracks at open, slightly sloping

the an

deriving

every benefit from the west sea breezes, one would suppose that neither epidemic nor endemic would find anything impure to fasten on there. Hut where it struck hardest was the dry rock, on the

ground,

of whom

were

in the E.

wards, and of

Ague.?Since last September?48 men, 34 of this number in the E. wards. 1875?October. 3 : November, 7 ; December, 61876 January, 9 ; February, 8 ; March, 4; April, 5 ; May, 6. Total 48. ?

I AM anxious to

posed sickly localities,

4

them 3 died.

pleasant elevation on a slope, towards the west of which stands the Regimental Hospital, sheltered from the unhealthy east ?wind by higher ground, on which are placed the hospital offices and godown. It is here that cholera hit the hardest, and it is here that, fever has been attacking the patients ever since. As I have every confidence in the absorbing power bv the leaves of certain trees of malarious gases during night, and tlit-ir giving them to the rajs of the sun next I caused holes to be blasted in the rock and have

day,

planted

belts of young

I trust, I may be excused, without incurring the charge of in giving my evidence in this matter. For I have encountered, I may say I have commanded battalions of soldiers against the severest epidern;cs of yellow fever in the

presumption,

West

Indies, and of cholera in America and in India. Ia mysterious coming?like the thief in the night?in their murderous striking, and tlieir silent and sudden going, they are the same. And I believe that, while we may escape them to a great extent by a judicious system of tactics in the changing of our ground?the plan originated by Field Marshal Sir W. Grornin when commanding in Jamaica and witnessed by me in 1841 a system of prevention should be adopted by the State, and that the very ordinary measures of deep subsoil draining, pure irrigation, and tree planting, which I practised with such success against the Delhi Sore in 1863, would, a3 I then said, prevent equally the approach of epidemics whether their

of cholera

or

fever.

Since I wrote the foregoing I am most glad to be able quote in strong support of my opinion the following extract a letter I have to-day received from Surgeon-Major Sexton the 8tli Native Infantry :?" I find in the sickness

Wanowrie

to of of

existing at

a

Hong-Kong,

corroboration of what happened some years ago ia where a most virulent outbreak of fever was trace-

able to the liberation of certain deleterious gases acid and carbonic oxide) by disintegrated rock hard

(carbonic resting on a.

such as.you describe, and I know of no better of prevention than those you have adopted, i.e., plantand draining."

substance,

means

ing Poona, 17th

June 1876.