MEDICAL EXAMINATION OF RECRUITS. 263 



examination, and that healthy men should be substituted 

 for all such as, from their habit of body or otherwise, seem 

 likely to suffer from a hot climate. 



The impropriety of sending to India men who are subject 

 to epilepsy must be obvious, when it is considered how great 

 are the languor and exhaustion which but too frequently 

 oppress even the healthiest within the tropics ; and which 

 never fail to prove more or less injurious, by increasing the 

 mobility of the nervous system. Nay, the almost constant 

 irritation, from the feeling_ of heat alone, independently of 

 its other effects, we conceive to be no trifling source of mis- 

 chief to those who are subject to attacks of this malady. 



No man should be allowed to enlist for any of our Eastern 

 settlements who has not been vaccinated or had the small- 

 pox ; for this disorder, if caught naturally in India, is often 

 of the confluent kind, and proves most destructive. 



Such individuals as suffer from cutaneous eruptions, of 

 •whatever description, are most unfit for service in India. 

 In a climate where the skin has so much to do, it is abso- 

 lutely necessary' that its condition be healthy, so as to trans- 

 mit the perspiration with the greatest possible facility, — a . 

 principle, it is true, which will hold good in every part of 

 the world, but which is particularly applicable to the torrid 

 zone, where a free exudation, to afford relief during the ex- 

 cessive heat, is almost as indispensable as the secretion of 

 mine itself. But it is not in this way alone that the cuticu- 

 lar discharge proves salutarj- in tropical countries : it ap- 

 pears to be powerfully preventive against various com- 

 plaints. Thus, it has been repeatedly remarked that such 

 70ung men as had suffered from dyspepsiain England found 

 their health much improved on coming to the Coromandel 

 coast, — a fact which could be accounted for in no other way 

 than by the almost continual moistness on the surface of the 

 body there experienced ; for it is an observation well estab- 

 lished, that in using exercise as a remedy in cases of bad di- 

 gestion in Europe, little benefit is derived from it when not 

 employed to such an amount as to bring on a degree of sweat- 

 inor. All extremes, however, are injurious. Should per- 

 spiration be excessive, or allowed too often to take place, 

 lanouor and general weakness in the first passages will en- 

 sue^ with that most certain of all consequences of violent 

 perspirations, constipaiion; much crude matter being thus 



