NARRATIVE OF THE CRUISE. 
1029 
during the Commission was 240, and the number of cases on the sick-list was 956, giving a 
percentage per annum of 113‘8. Seven deaths occurred, giving a percentage of 0 - 83 per 
annum. Only two of these last were due to natural causes, three of them being caused 
by violence and two by acute poisoning. Eleven men were invalided (l ‘30 per cent, per 
annum), and fifteen were sent to hospital, or at the rate of 1 ‘78 per cent, per annum. 
The only other changes, besides those arising from deaths, invaliding, and sending men 
to hospital, were due to desertion, for which the attractions of the Australian ports 
visited are chiefly responsible. 
The following brief enumeration of the principal diseases, &c., which prevailed on 
board, the localities in which these occurred, and the causes to which they were attribu- 
table, comprises all the information of medical interest that can be recorded in the limits 
of this short article : : — 
General Diseases. 
Enteric Fever . — Two cases of this fever occurred, one at Sidney where, at the time of 
the visit, the disease prevailed in the lower and dirtier parts of the town frequented by 
blue-jackets when on leave, and where the sewage arrangements were very defective, the 
main sewer discharging into the land-locked harbour in the immediate vicinity of the 
most crowded part of the town. The second case occurred at Hong Kong, where the 
disease was also prevalent at the time. 
' Yellow Fever . — A single case occurred on board during the ship’s stay at Bahia. 
The medical officers were assured on arrival that the town was quite free from this 
formidable disease, but within a few days some merchant seamen in the harbour, died of 
it, and six days after arrival an ordinary seaman who had slept on shore four nights 
previously was taken ill and was landed at the Brazilian Yellow Fever Hospital, where 
he afterwards died. The weather was, at the time of the visit (September), hot and 
oppressive, and the sanitary arrangements of the town were very defective. The ship 
left Bahia immediately, and proceeded to a higher and cooler latitude. Fortunately 
no further case of this fever occurred. 
Malarious Fevers . — It might have been expected, owing to the number of places in 
the tropics visited where these fevers are endemic, that there would have been a large 
amount of sickness among the ship’s company from this cause. Only twenty-eight 
cases occurred, however, and these were of a comparatively mild description. This prac- 
tical immunity may be ascribed to the care taken to avoid unnecessary exposure of the 
men employed in boats, surveying, &c., in malarious places ; compelling men on leave 
to be on board by sunset ; and lastly, perhaps, to the prophylactic use of quinine in places 
where the malarious poison was supposed to be unusually potent. No death nor invalid- 
ing occurred from this cause. The following are the places in which the disease was 
