THE ARMY BRITISH IN INDIA: ITS PRESERVATION BY AN APPROPRIATE CLOTHING, HOUSING, LOCATING, RECREATIVE EMPLOYMENT, AND HOPEFUL ENCOURAGEMENT OF THE TROOPS. AN APPENDIX ON INDIA : THE CTLHIEMTAAITDAEMNIOINPTIYSITTSRTAHHTIELILOTSNRA;OFTFFHIJECUSDITENIVOCEEPLI;OUTPMHMEETNBHTLEAOVCFAKILTAUSCERTEO;SFOTIDHNREDCIBPASR,OIPGNREDERUSMSSATONRFYE,NCTHARNIDS-ARTS; CAUS;ESOF DISAFFECTION,AN;DOFTHERECENTREB;ELLION THE TRADITIONARY POLICY; MISGOVERNMENT BY ; NATIVERULERS ANNEXATIONSOFTHEIR ; TERRITORY,ETC. By JULIUS JEFFEEYS, F.K.S., FORMERLYSTAFF-SURGEONOF CAWNPORE, AND CIVILSURGEONOFFUTTEII6USH. LONDON: LONGMAN, BROWN, GEEEN, LONGMANS, & ROBERTS. 1858. LONDON: PRIKTED BY W. CLOWES AKDSOKS,STAMFOKI) STREET, AND CHARIKG CtlOSS. ; TO JAMES RANALD MARTIN, Esq., F.R.S. Kingston, Surrey, May 20th, 1858. My dear Martin, It is not a friendly acquaintance of many years only which prompts my desire to address these pages to you. I would fain by these lines connect a work on Tropical Prophylactics with your valuable writings on Tropical Pathology and Therapeutics. It is doubtless well said that prevention is better than cure and to the former you have, throughout j'our career abroad and at home, devoted your best energies, while, in bounden duty, as an army surgeon, you have likewise pursued, and with an equal success, the science and practice ofcuring disease. Having propounded more advanced views on Tropical Patho- — logy, you have established them by the surest means an exten- sively successful practice; and you have shown, during the many years since your return to Europe, that professional talent and benevolence are not limited in their sphere to one clime alone, but are general in their efficiency and action. Formyself, accident, not choice,having found me a student of medicine, while it was impossible not to pursue with pleasure medical philosophy, as such, and as the foremost in secular knowledge, a natural temperament has ever caused me to seek release from the practice of an uncertain science, the subject of which was the living man ; and to prefer operating upon inanimate matter (I cared not in how large or small propor- tions) through the agency, too, of more certain knowledge. I have been ready to pay the penalty, and it is not a small one, of being a member of one profession, but an amateur of others. To this cause is due the present, and former, efforts IV DEDICATION. to avoid a sense of professional barrenness by performing a mediqal part tbrough the agency of physical and mechanical science. A member of the Health of Towns' Commission, and of the recent Army Sanitary Commission, you may view, with more than a friendly interest, the effort of a not unfamiliar pen to contribute something towards the preservation of the soldiers' health in the Tropics, which forms the prominent portion of this volume; and of which a part was in the press when the Eeport of your Commission was published. That Eeport, it would appear, for I have not seen it, is such, in ability and meetness ofofficial style, as the names on the Commission would guarantee. In the following composition you will observe a contrast, and in the Introduction its apology. I remain. My dear Martin, Very sincerely yours, Julius Jeffreys. INTRODUCTION. In placing before the public a work touching upon various questions of importance relating to India, the Author feels sensible that the many years which have elapsed since he left that country, and the many months since the first portion of this volume was sent to press, demand some explanation in justi- fication of the publication. Without venturing, with the great historian of India, to claim as an advantage for the task, the study of his subject in England removed from all such prejudice as may arise from a personal obser- vation of the country, he may safely presume that a residence of many years in India of such intensity as his own, followed since his return by an attentive observation of the progress of events, will be con- sidered as affording ample opportunities to any mind seriously devoted to the inquiry. For arriving at information connected ^sith India, of the nature briefly imparted in the followingpages, a residence in the country of some years' duration was, he thinks, indispensable ; but had its duration been doubled it could have resulted in little more than a repetition of the same observations and ex- perience. • Such has been the rapidity of events during the time that this Work has been in the press, that they have already realized to a distressing extent antici- pations in its pages, indited as a warning protest against the encouragements to brave the tropical sun published at the time on all side?, even in India, and — VI INTRODUCTION. notunreasonably copied from such local authority by the press in England. The delay in the publication of the work has been caused by the same hesitation to break a purposed silence upon Indian questions, which has been maintained since the first year of the Author's return,with one exception ofan anony- mous pamphlet. Thepresent volume was commenced as a pamphlet, to be rigidly confined to one subject the Dress of British Troops in India. On opening for the purpose his somewhat voluminous notes on India, matter which had been gradually accumulated upon a variety of subjects presented itself, and ap- peared to possess at least equal importance with that which was to have formed a monograph of small bulk ; while it related t—o questions of much interest at the present moment of more interest to many minds than the clothing of troops. Hence the body of the Work-. retaining its military character, has ex- panded from one to five heads while a quantity of ; matter, most of it upon wider and still more impor- tant questions, has found its way into the Appendix, and doubled the contents of the volume. To some of this matter, more especially to that relating to the opium question* and to the development of the re- sources arid industry ofIndia, and the state of the useful arts there,\ the reader's attention is invited with an anxiety second only to that for the preservation and happiness, and hopes for time and eternity, of the British soldiery and their families in India. Without the power to express himselfupon serious questions in any other terms than such as are com- mensurate with their gravity, the Author must be prepared to find exception taken to the strength of * AppendixI, page 323. t Appendix F, page 255. INTRODUCTION. Vll some of his expressions. It is, however, to errors not persons they apply and he is but too conscious ; of his own supineness in faihng to impart to others information long accumulated and convictions deeply felt upon the various questions contained in this volume, not to apply to himself a due share of the inferences deducible from the earnest deprecation of neglect which he has been constrained to make. In 1824, the Author visited the Himalayas, at the age of twenty-three,forthe purpose ofstudying their climate and its sanitary properties, and published the result of his observations in an essay,* in which the formation of stations at suitable elevations was re- commended. The subject attracted the attention of the Government of Bengal, and the medical autho- rities, with whom he had correspondencef on the establishment ofthe military sanitary stations which were shortly afterwards fixed at Simla, Missouri, and Landour. Ten years afterwards, in 1834, he laid before Lord William Bentinck, then Grovernor-Greneral of India, certain views having reference to the mental and sanitary condition of British troops in that country, with a proposal based on themfor offeringthe soldiery a certain employment, which would prove to them a cheering and remunerative occupation, keeping them from ennui and dissipation, and tending to promote their happiness, contentment, and health ; and which * Appendix E, page 242. + ThelateDr.Burke, H.M.Inspector-GeneralofHospitalsin India, and Mr. MacDowell, Superintending Surgeonofthe Kumaul Division (which included the Hillcountry), informed the Author that the perusal of that essay had led them to address: the one the Government, the other the Medical Board, inviting their attention to the formation of Military Sani- tary Stations at the elevations recommended. Vlll INTEODUCTIOK would at the same time be instrumental towards improving many of the useful arts in India, at present too rudely conducted to be a source of national wealth or ofsocial advancement. He has to acknowledge with grateful recollections the very encouraging reception his Lordship af- forded to this and other proposals for developing the resources of the country, and advancing the condition of the natives. He did him the honour, more than once, of expressing a wish that his health might permit him to remain in India, with a view to giving effect to some of these plans. But multifarious exer- tions of mind and body had proved exhausting, and compelled himtoleave. Nevertheless,he had endured for many years an amount of exposure to the sun and weather which would have proved fatal to a much stronger person clad in an ordinary manner. The exemption from serious illness, which was se- cured by simply clothing himself in a respectful obedience to natural laws, on the one hand, and the deplorable effects in others which he has, times without number, witnessed from long-continued ex- posure with defective clothing, on the other hand, have from an early period impressed him with the conviction that much more might be done to protect British troops exposed on duty in the Tropics. It was his desire, many years ago, to have attracted the attention of the home authorities to the ques- tion but after some observation he could not flatter ; himself that hewould succeed in impressing uponthe minds of persons then in power convictions as deep as his own, as to the greater extent to which the health and lives of British soldiers in India might be preserved the prevailing opinion appearing to he ; INTRODUCTION. IX that whatever was practicable had been already done. Upon the news of the mutiny reaching England, the extensive exposure of our troops which it would necessarily involve renewed the impressions of thirty years. Accordingly, he endeavoured to invite atten- tion to the subject then. More recently he has found the Chairman and Deputy-Chairman of the East India Direction ready to afford every attention to the question, and fully alive to its importance. For more general information of a sanitary cha- racter relating to the army, the reader is referred to the labours of the various military medical oiEcers who have written on the subject more especially to ; those of Mr. Martin, connected with India, in which it is difficultwhether to admire most the judgment or theenergydisplayed. Such, likewise,wouldappear to be the character of the Report of the Army Sanitary Commission, of which he, with others of distin- guished ability, is a member. The author wouldregretnothaving had the oppor- tunity of availing himself of that Report, published when these pages were in the press, had the object of his undertaking embraced anything like a treatise on the whole sanitary question. For the views and matter contained in the following pages he is solely responsible, as the result of his own observations. To the ability and meetness of style of the Sani- tary Report (which he has not himself seen) the public press has borne testimony as being such as the constitution of the Commission could not fail to A ensure. Royal Commission maintains a proper dignity by presuming that its authority alone will : command for t]ie facts it reports, either the attention X INTEODUCTION. of the executive, or an -appeal to public feeling through the eloquence of the politician. But for a private writer to imitate the impassive style of a Royal Eeport is a pedantry of the day which too often fails of its object. If a bare announcement of facts would avail anything, the evils which pre- vail on all hands, would have been long since re- medied. The mind, in busy English life, cannot, or will not, take the trouble to nurse a bare and un- sightly fact, and much less a progeny of them, until it has grown to such proportions as to hold posses- A sion of the feelings and impel them to action. fact, unsupported by influential authority, before it can be felt, as well as known, by a reader or hearer, must be, as it were, weighed in his presence, and have its various aspects, hues, tendencies, and claims set fully and forcibly before him ; or in general it had better not be stated at all ; for the condition of all others most hopeless of good is a familiarity of the ear with grave facts unaccompanied by any in- fluence of them on the heart. ItisundertheseconvictionstheAuthorwrites but, ; though he has not allowed any consideration how far his remarks may be acceptable or otherwise to some of his readers to cramp his expressions, he has to regret his inability to do more justice to the claims headvocates andthat, owingtovariousinterruptions, ; this work, which has been a long time in the press, should not have been published last year.