Page:How People May Live and not Die in India.pdf/15

 So much for intemperance. But not to this alone, nor to this mainly, nor to this and its kindred vice together, is to be laid the soldier mortality in India.

The diseases from which the soldier mainly suffers there are miasmatic: now intemperance never produced miasmatic diseases yet. They are foul-air diseases and foul-water diseases: fevers, dysenteries, and so on. But intemperance may cause liver disease; and it may put the man into a state of health which prevents him from resisting miasmatic causes.

2. What are these causes? We have not far to look.

The Briton leaves his national civilisation behind him, and brings his personal vices with him.

At home there have been great improvements everywhere in agricultural and in town drainage, and in providing plentiful and pure water supplies.

There is nothing of the kind in India. There is no drainage either in town or in country. There is not a single station drained. If such a state of things existed at home, we should know that we have fevers, cholera, and epidemics to expect. But hitherto only a few enlightened people have expected anything of the kind from these same causes in India (although they are always happening).

As regards water, there is certainly not a single barrack in India, which is supplied, in our sense of the term, at all. There are neither water-pipes nor drain-pipes. Water is to be had either from tanks,