no 



Typographical Report on the Neilgherries, 



[July 



mission, and the exacerbations were attended with delirium. The li- 

 ver appeared to have been primarily affected, and notwithstanding 

 the most unremitting attention by local bleeding, blistering, and vari- 

 ous kinds of counter-irritation, with the most varied exhibition of mer- 

 cury, combined and otherwise, no impression could be made on the 

 liver, or its secretions, which were dark green or black, until latterly, 

 when they became bright yellow, but without odour. The exciting 

 cause of this, upon the minutest enquiry, was found to be a cold blast 

 of wind, to which the patient had been exposed for about ten minutes. 

 I would look upon this rather as an exception, than tending to esta- 

 blish the fact that Kotagherry is usually productive of bilious remit- 

 tent fever. The ordinary effect of a cold blast of wind, if the person be 

 long exposed to it, is to produce congestion of the liver, unattended 

 with fever. This is not an uncommon ailment on the hills, and per- 

 haps may be said to be the only complaint properly belonging to the 

 climate, which may in^me respects be calculated to produce it, be- 

 cause during the day the heat of the sun is often great, and a person 

 exposed £0 it would have the superficial vessels much excited; and 

 then, after sunset, the temperature falls very rapidly, perhaps so much 

 as 40 degrees. i 

 Few places, it must be admitted, can advance so many negative [ 

 proofs of salubrity, as here are advanced with respect to the hills. In 

 looking over the return of sick among the prisoners in four years, 

 there are but 23 deaths in 1677 cases, of all kinds, or less than one and 

 a half per cent; or, taking the average number of prisoners at all times 

 in the jail at 105, 5| per cert per annum; and of these casualties ten 

 of them were pulmonary complaints contracted in the low country, and \ 

 fatally terminated here in the cold weather, the sharp air rapidly ac- \ 

 celerdting their progress. The fatal cases of fever were also contract- ! 

 ed in the low country. Dysentery rarely originates here, notwith- I 

 standing all the wet ; so much the contrary, that I have never known 

 an instance of it, except in two children of the same family, and severe 

 dysenteries have been cured here, which in any moist climate in the 

 low country most probably would not have recovered. The fatal cases 

 of anasarca were in persons of exhausted constitutions, advanced in 

 years, who, having been previously always accustomed to the heat of 

 the plains, could not be acclimatized, and sunk under their ailments. 

 It will, therefore, be plain, on consideration even of these unfavourable 

 instances, that little blame attaches to this climate in the production 

 of these casualties, the unhealthy condition and fatal tendency having 

 previously existed. Of the truth of this no stronger proof can be giv- ^ 

 en, than the robust frames of the prisoners who at present are in the 



