Prickly Heat. I have tried lime juice, hair powder, and a variety of external applications, with little or no benefit. In short, the only means which I ever saw productive of any good effect in mitigating its violence, till the constitution got assimilated to the climate, were-light clothing-temperance in eating and drinking-avoiding all exercise in the heat of the day-open bowels-and last, not least, a determined resolution to resist with stoical apathy its first attacks. To sit quiet and unmoved under its pressure is undoubtedly no easy task, but if we can only muster up fortitude enough to bear with patience the first few minutes of the assault, without being roused into motion, the enemy, like the foiled tiger, will generally sneak off, and leave us victorious for the time. : Endemic of Bengal. PART II. SPECIFIC DISEASES. ENDEMIC FEVER OF BENGAL, Commonly called the Marsh Remittent Fever. SEC. 1. The importance of this disease will not be questioned, when it is considered, that in the small portion of the Hoogly, running between Calcutta and Kedgeree, full three hundred European sailors (better than a fourth of the ships' crews) fall annual victims to its ravages !* The subject therefore is highly interesting, and must receive a considerable share of our attention. There is no unmixed good in this world. The inundations of the Nile and the Ganges, while they scatter fertility over the valley of Egypt, and the plains of Bengal, sow with a liberal hand, at the same time, the seeds of dreadful diseases! Hence, Cairo and Calcutta have severely suffered from the overflowings of their respective rivers. These consequences are not confined to tropical countries alone. Swamps and marshes, in all latitudes, give rise to intermittents and remittents, varying in degree and danger, according to the heat, rains, and other circumstances of the season. The deleterious influence of an atmosphere, impregnated with marsh effluvia, on the human frame, is in some places astonishing. In the lower districts of Georgia, life is curtailed to forty or fifty years while in certain swampy situations of * Vide Capt. Williamson's East India Vade Mecum. Endemic of Bengal. Virginia, (Peterborough) it is asserted that twenty years bound the contracted range of human existence ! I have myself, in rambling through the villages of Beveland and Walcheren, been struck with the conspicuous marks of premature old age, which all, beyond maturity, exhibited; particularly among the peasantry. On enquiring the ages of decrepid wretches, withered, sallow, and apparently on the borders of fourscore, I was surprised to find that fifty-five or sixty years were all they had numbered in these noxious fens. Often have I been asked by inattentive observers, why so unhealthy a country should present so great a number of very old people? But, to return to the Ganges. This immense river, originating in the mountains of Tibet, and winding in a South-eastern direction, collecting its tributary streams from all quarters as it proceeds, after a course of more than a thousand miles, bursts its boundaries, in the rainy season, and covers the plains of Bengal with an expansive sheet of turbid water. But the ground springing a little, as it approaches the coast, prevents the inundation from rushing at once into the ocean it therefore disembogues itself slowly through a multiplicity of channels, that intersect the great Indian Delta, or Sunderbunds, in every possible direction. This check keeps the plains of Bengal overflowed from the latter end of July till the middle of October; during which period, noted cities, populous villages, exalted mosques, and stupendous pagodas, are seen just above the level of this temporary ocean, surrounded by innumerable boats, now the habitations of domesticated animals. Endemic of Bengal. At this time, vessels even of an hundred tons are beheld traversing the country in various routes, wafted by a breeze that seldom shifts more than a point or two from South. The depth of water during the inundation, varies from ten to thirty feet, according to the undulations of the ground. The original course of rivers is now known only by their currents, which may have a velocity of four miles an hour, on an average, while the great body of water, spread over the plains, moves at the rate of half a mile or a mile in the same space of time. A chemical analysis of the various impregnations and impurities which the Ganges and its contributory streams sweep down to Bengal, and which either subside in feculence on the soil, or are carried on to the sea, would form an interesting memoir; it will be sufficient in this place to glance at a few of them. The Western bank of the Ganges itself, between Hurdwar and Benares, consists in general of lime, concreted in irregular masses; and all the rivers which issue from the Western bank are more or less impregnated with the same substance; while on the opposite bank the waters partake of a strong solution of nitre, with which the plains of Oude, Fyzabad, and Gazeepour, abound, The country lying between the Ganges and the Goomty, on the Eastern bank, is replete with fossil alkali, named "seedgy," giving rise to severe bowel complaints among the natives; while the swamps of Sasseram are annually in a state of partial corruption, sufficient to occasion the most malignant diseases in the month of November, when the sun's power promotes an astonishing evaporation, Endemic of Bengal. filling the air with miasmata, and spreading destruction among all the living tribes. The Mahana, the Mutwalla, and various other mountain rivers, that rush into the Ganges between Patna and Boglepore, are frequently tinged with copper. The 12th Battalion of Native Infantry were nearly poisoned by drinking at one of these streams. But it would be endless to trace all the sources of pollution in the vegetable and mineral kingdoms; one or two only in the animal kingdom will be selected as specimens in that extensive department. The Hindoo religion enacts, that as soon as the spirit has taken its departure, the body shall be burnt on the banks of the Ganges, and that the ashes, together with every fragment of the funeral pile be committed to the sacred stream. In a country where dissolution and putrefaction are nearly simultaneous, the utility of such a measure is self-evident; but either from indolence or penury, the body is now generally placed on a small hurdle, and when little more than scorched, is pushed off from the shore with a bamboo, there to float until it arrives at the ocean, unless it be previously picked up by a shark or alligator; or, which is frequently the case, dragged ashore by Pariar dogs, and devoured by them, in company with a numerous train of carrion birds of various descriptions. From one hundred to one hundred and fifty of these disgusting objects may be counted passing any one point in the course of a day; and in some places where eddies prevail, a whole vortex of putrid corses may be seen circling about |