La Bourgade, Sept. 12.
The delayed departure of the officers whose regiments have been
draughted, affords me an opportunity of addressing to you some
additional notes by the same conveyance. They have been detained in the
expectation that some of them might have remained with the 39th
regiment, in order to have increased its strength in officers, in
proportion to its increase of privates; but the Commander in Chief not
acceding to this arrangement, they are all ordered to embark, without
loss of time, for England, and to take with them the sergeants and
drummers; yet, on account of the extreme urgency of this sickly period,
and the very limited number of assistants we have for hospital duty, we
are allowed to detain the surgeon and mate of the 99th regiment; without
whom, indeed, we must have been reduced to the greatest distress; for
the surgeon of this corps has been my best support from the time of our
arrival, being the only commissioned medical officer I have had with me,
during the whole of our busy service.
Respecting the destination of the other gentlemen of the hospital staff
and myself, I have nothing new to add. Incertitude is still the order of
the day. We remain without receiving either pay or allowances, and
subsist almost wholly upon our salt rations. Fortunately this is one of
the few countries where but little money is required, or I should rather
say, where if a man had much, it might be difficult to spend it. Fruit
and vegetables are abundant, but the riches of Crœsus could not procure
a regular supply of fresh animal provisions for our table. For my own
part I am become so much a creole, and so fond of plantains, that I
should experience but little hardship if these were the only food.
You will perceive from this letter, that I have again changed my home.
After I had separated the happy group of convalescents from the sick,
and removed them to distant quarters upon the coast, I left the patients
then remaining at Mahaica under the care of Mr. Ord, acting surgeon to
the 39th regiment, and returned to take charge of the hospital, at our
greater depôt at La Bourgade. With infinite satisfaction I feel myself
able to inform you that the high malignity of the disease begins to
yield to the approach of a more benign season. Since my return hither,
several patients have been admitted, in whom the fever appears under an
intermittent type. If it were possible to divest myself of the regret I
feel on account of the poor men’s sufferings, and from our sick list
being, by any cause, increased, I might truly say that I received these
cases with pleasure, hailing them as a pledge that our worst foe has run
his career; for, if the fever should assume a _remittent_, or an
_intermittent_ course, we shall know how to oppose ourselves to its
progress, and to prevent it from repeating the devastations it has
committed in its _continued_ form.
Still the hospital is sadly crowded, and, from the return made to me of
the last week, the proportion of casualties does not seem to be yet
diminished; but they now proceed less from cases recently admitted, than
from the lingering remains of more violent disease. At the same time I
may remark, that it is only from receiving a considerable proportion of
intermittents, at once, that we are led to hope the fever is changing to
a milder type, for repeated examples occurred, at Mahaica, of different
patients being brought to the hospital at the same period, with the
disease under all the varied forms of _intermittent_, _remittent_, and
_continued_ fever, yet each of them were occasionally converted into the
most malignant “_yellow_ fever,” and rapidly terminated in death.
Amidst all the afflicting histories of this destructive malady, I should
rejoice exceedingly if it were in my power to report to you more
favorably of the patients under surgical treatment in our hospital; but,
unhappily, at the moment of our greatest pressure and anxiety regarding
the fever, our services are most called for by the patients with sores
and ulcers, who likewise feel the sad effects of climate and of season.
In speaking upon this subject, I ought to add that the attention of Mr.
Blackader, the surgeon, has been unremitted; and that his abilities are
not less eminent than his zeal. His patients have been watched with a
tender care, and he has been indefatigable in his endeavours to relieve
them; the more so from their sufferings having been peculiarly the
subject of our conversation. We are willing to hope that the unhappy
difficulties he has met with, in his practice, may be more the effect of
season than of climate, and that as the fevers grow milder with finer
weather, the wounds and ulcers will also assume a more healthy
disposition.
Whether from a wound, a scratch, the bite of a musquito, or the simplest
excoriation, the progress of the sore has been the same. It seems, at
first, to go on kindly, gradually advancing in a healing state, but
before it is quite well, the patient loses his appetite, feels sickly,
or is attacked with a febrile paroxysm, and sinks into a state of
relaxation and debility; with the skin and muscles flaccid, the
countenance pale, and the whole frame languid, and weak. The ulcer
partaking of the general change grows black and foul, and, sloughing
away, becomes wider and deeper than it was at first. After a time, the
patient recovers his lost strength, and by the aid of bark, wine, and
tonics, the part again assumes a healthy aspect, florid granulations
form, and the healing process is renewed. Proceeding now as before it
often reaches that state, which creates the daily hope of a new cuticle
forming over it to complete the cure: but a febrile exacerbation again
seizes the patient, and the whole disastrous round is repeated. The
disease extends itself still wider than before, and the energies of the
system being further impaired, it is longer ere it throws off its
foulness, to take on a clean and healthy appearance. Yet this does
follow, and the now wide and ragged sore again begins to heal. The
patient likewise recovers a degree of strength, but remains considerably
weakened. The healing of the wound advances, though slowly, and again
holds out fair prospects to the miserable sufferer; but, before it has
cicatrized with new skin, he relapses, the ulcer blackens, becomes foul
and offensive, and the parts around slough away to a frightful extent;
the patient sinking far below his former debility. He next recovers but
a slight degree of strength; and the sore only clears itself to widen
its ravages; the appetite is destroyed; extreme lassitude prevails;
cough, and hectic fever supervene; and the patient lingers out a few
wretched weeks, until death kindly offers him relief. Often the event is
more rapid; but it happens not unfrequently that the patient is deluded
three, four, or more times with the fairest prospect of recovery, then,
suddenly and without any apparent cause, is thrown back, growing more
and more feeble from each attack, until every energy of the constitution
is exhausted.
Having witnessed, with extreme pain, the cruel sufferings of this class
of our patients, we are particularly happy to avail ourselves of the
present return of the officers, to put a party of sick, from the
surgical wards, under their protection to England, where they will have
the chance of speedy recovery, and of soon returning to their duty. As
our hospitals will be thus considerably relieved, I shall be the better
enabled to spare the services of Mr. Beane, one of our most useful
assistants, whom I have placed on board to take charge of them upon the
passage. I should remark that the season proves almost equally sickly
among the Dutch troops as the English, although far less fatal. With the
Hollanders the fever has been milder, and of a remittent type, giving
way to the common treatment used in what is termed the bilious remittent
fever of the country. The Dutch surgeon-major, who has been many years
in the colony, is now upon the sick list; but, in him, the fever appears
as an intermittent. On calling to visit him, I found him in a regular
paroxysm of ague, the form which the fever very commonly assumes among
the creoles, and the negroes.
We have lately had the misfortune to be deprived of another of our
assistants, but his loss was the effect of accident. He was stationed at
Maiconuy, where he was in the habit of bathing frequently in the river.
One evening, as he was taking his favorite exercise of swimming across
to the opposite bank, he suddenly disappeared, and was seen no more. We
do not learn that any one was in the water with him at the time, but
those who have since been here, from that post, inform us that it was
generally attributed to an alligator seizing him, and suddenly dragging
him down.
The return of our comrades to England gives me an opportunity of sending
you the first copy of a new periodical paper, just published in this
colony, called the Demarara Gazette. You will find from the composition
no less than from the printing, and the paper, that it is quite an
original.
But what will you say of our growing importance when I tell you, that we
have not only a newspaper established, to afford us all the advantages
of a speedy circulation of intelligence; and a strong regiment of black
rangers, raised for the defence of the colony; but that we have also a
colonial corps, formed from among the respectable part of the
inhabitants, for the mutual protection of each other’s property, and for
the general defence of the settlement.