Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/241

 was after the capture of Rangoon, in April, 1852. At the great pagoda, within the stockade, in the field hospital, and on board the shipping, it raged with appalling mortality. I have never seen it in so aggravated a form, and of thirty-three European artillery men attacked, I lost nine, most of them the finest and strongest men of the battalion.

Though cholera so rarely assumes the epidemic form, an occasional case happens at all seasons.

8. SCURVY.—Scurvy has of late years become much more prevalent in India than formerly, or rather I am inclined to think that that disease has previously existed under some other names. On my assuming medical charge of the civil station of Gohatti, 1836, I found it prevalent amongst the prisoners, under the name of gangrene, and that many of them had, previous to that time, died of it. The mouth was the chief seat of the disease. It manifested itself by a pale sponginess of the gums, and looseness of the teeth; or by a foul ulcer inside the cheek. All the symptoms of profuse salivation rapidly ensued; the gums became a mass of suppurating matter, the teeth dropped out, the ulcer spread over the mouth, the cheeks sloughed away, the patient sank exhausted—or, if he recovered, he was frightfully deformed. The hospital stores contained almost no anti-scorbutic. Oranges and lemons, indigenous to the neighbouring hills, were