Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/242

 then plentiful in the bazaar. I bought them in basket-suds, prescribed them ad libitum in every case, and found them a perfect specific. I was fortunate in losing only one or two cases, and they were far advanced before they came under my care. No symptom of this disease showed itself amongst the Europeans at the station.

At Lahore, in 1848, I had no less than 425 cases of scurvy amongst the Sepoys of the 31st regiment native infantry. The ulcers generally began by a thickening swelling and engorgement of the cellular substance, soon after assuming the nature of an irritable bod, which, when cut into presented a spongy mass of cells infiltrated with pus. These sometimes remained in a chronic state, covered with a hard raised horny crust, or they ran into a phagydenic ulcer extending rapidly on all sides, dividing muscles and tendons, and laying bare the very bones. No part of the body was free from them, though they were chiefly confined to the lower extremities. When most prevalent every open sore took on the same ulcerative character, and a bubo, an abrasion, or a blister, as in hospital gangrene was speedily changed into a phagydenic ulcer, threatening to involve the whole limb in mortification. Such ulcers generally went by the vague name of Scinde boils, but I came to the conclusion, that all such sores so common along the course of the