Our Quarters, A Small-Pox Asylum, 
213 
my own wash and sickroom. Ii' one heats it to a moderate degree it 
develops a quantity of sulphuretted hydrogen.* 
677. Within a few days after arrival our hitherto fellow travellers, 
Lieut. Glascott and Secretary Hancock, tendered their resignations to 
my brother and the Governor. Both had been none too pleased with the 
perils and hardships of an expedition like ours, and as the most danger- 
ous of the journeys were still to be performed they thought it wiser to 
withdraw before they started. Glascott intended settling in Georgetown 
as a Land Surveyor, especially as Emancipation had brought about 
considerable changes in the relations of property and opened a profitable 
field for Lis activities: Hancock on the other hand wanted to renew at 
the Colonial Hospital the medical course that lie had thrown up a long 
time before, and later on to practise as a full-fledged physician. Un- 
fortunately lie fell into bad company, left the Hospital a few days later, 
and indulged his propensity for spirituous liquor unchecked: within 
three weeks of leaving us he was down with fever and beyond hope of 
recovery. 
678. A lucky chance relieved my brother quicker than he expected, of 
the dilemma in which Glascott’s retirement had placed him. A cer- 
tain Mr. Fryer who had served in the Anglo-Spanisli Legion at first as 
doctor, and then for three years as officer, and had fought in the battle 
of Vittoria and several others of that campaign, but after the disbanding 
of the Legion wanted to try his luck in Guiana, gladly accepted the ap- 
pointment offered him. The loss was therefore replaced and no further 
obstacle threatened on this score, but my brother was still waiting in 
vain for the new instructions that were delayed, owing to a change 
in the Ministry at home having taken place in the meantime. Although 
what with the present sad and gloomy conditions of the times, we felt 
very restless at having to postpone our departure until the receipt of 
orders to that effect, we nevertheless had to make the best of a bad job 
and mutually reproved one another for fretting. The Smallpox Hospital, 
however, made our stay still more depressing, for owing to the large 
number of patients and small number of attendants, it happened daily 
that often more than one patient mad with fever, would escape from the 
Institution and, owing to some inexplicable predilection for us, almost 
always seek asylum in our quarters from the dangers created in their 
fevered imaginations. The look of such a madman who could only be 
brought back to hospital by force and to the accompaniment of the most 
* This is an excellent example of the confused pathology of the day with regard to the diseases in 
question. The author was probably correct in saying that “doctors are agreed that Yellow Fever 
is a peculiar Typhus” since little was known as to the aetiology either of Typhus or of Yellow Fever. 
Yellow Fever, Typhus and the various forms of Malarial Fever appear all to have been grouped to- 
gether. It is noteworthy that the Y r ellow Fever epidemic was confined almost entirely, as he remarks, 
to the City of Georgetown, Berbice and the outposts escaping. This distribution, of course, depended 
largely upon the distribution of Stegomyia fasciata in those days. The whole description, however, is 
an excellent example of the remarkably acute observation of the author. He notes that, it attacked 
‘ those who have not yet got accustomed,” “begins at the end of the long wet season,” that the “ former 
assumption as to contact or association with sick persons is unfounded,” the “black substance had little 
resemblance to bile,” etc. (F.G.R.) 
