APPENDICES. 55 



APPENDIX B. 



Remarks on the Kangra Valley, in a Sanitary point 

 of mew. 



AN average of about sixty-four men of the 52nd Light Infantry 

 have been quartered at the Kangra Fort during the past 

 two years and two-thirds. No diseases have occurred that 

 can be considered peculiar to the Kangra Valley. The sick 

 have ranged from about four to five per cent., and during the 

 whole of the above period but two deaths have taken place ; and 

 but one death was caused by disease, the other being an 

 accidental drowning while bathing. 



The class of diseases that the men have suffered from has 

 been trivial in character, and if a serious complaint did happen, 

 it was mostly a remnant of disease contracted by the soldier 

 during the hardships of the siege of Delhi, or from service in 

 the plains. 



In the above average of sick, several invalids who were sent 

 up from head-quarters to Kangra and Dhurmsalla are included. 

 Among the native population, which is very large, a consider- 

 able amount of malarious disease exists. Ophthalmia, also, is 

 common. There are other diseases, also, to which filth and 

 squalor give rise. 



Rice is extensively cultivated, and forms to many their staple 

 article of food. While the mode of cultivating rice may be 

 considered as an exciting cause of the worst of their diseases 

 (Febris Inter mittens, &c.), the consumption of the same (to the 

 exclusion of other food), from its less nourishing properties, pre- 

 disposes to diseases of debility (of which goitre, which is very 

 prevalent, may be taken as an example), and renders them less 

 able to withstand the noxious influences of malaria, or the more 

 sudden inroads of acute disease, than the well-fed and full- 

 blooded Englishman. Natives, I think, usually recover more 

 quickly from slight injuries than Englishmen, but where a long 

 drain on the constitution (as in a severe compound fracture) is 

 established, the Englishman, in my opinion, has the better of the 

 native. The havoc that cholera makes among natives and the 

 comparative immunity of Europeans is well known. 



The scanty nature of the clothing of the poorer classes of 

 natives during the winter months is a predisposing cause of 



