Medical Sketches of the Expedition to Egypt, from IndiaMcGrigor, James, Sir
History
Medical Sketches of the Expedition to Egypt, from India
McGrigor, James, Sir
Great Britain. Army -- Sanitary affairs; Medicine, Military
Of the numerous imperfection of these Sketches, I am abundantly sensible.
The life of a medical man in the army is at no time very favourable to
literary pursuits; mine has been peculiarly unfavourable; and I have had
little time or opportunity, since I first entered the army, to attend
to the ornaments of diction. For the last fifteen years of my life;
mostly spent in the East Indies, West Indies, or at the Cape of Good
Hope; sometimes at sea, sometimes on land; my time has been occupied in a
laborious attention to my duty in the army.
Some necessary avocations oblige me to dismiss this tract in a more
imperfect form than it might have appeared in, perhaps with more leisure.
As it is, it conveyed to government, in India, all the information which
they required; and I must mention, that it comes before the public very
nearly in the state in which I presented it as a report in India. From
materials in my possession, I could have enlarged most parts of it, and
rendered the whole more complete; but, when I drew up the following
account in India, it never occurred to me, that my imperfect Memoir
would be the only medical account of the Egyptian expedition. I expected,
on my arrival in England, to have found complete histories of the climate
and diseases of Egypt, during the time that it was occupied by the
English, from some of the medical staff of the British army; several of
whom were known to be fully equal to the task. If any of these gentlemen
should hereafter give to the world the medical history of this renowned
campaign, my Memoir may stand in some stead: it gives some facts and it
will supply some information to which no one but myself had access.
At the present moment, I have not leisure to enlarge or alter it; and
some friends, who have seen the manuscript, press its publication at the
present time.
In the execution of my duty, during a long and perilous voyage, and alter
the most fatiguing marches, I sometimes laboured under difficulties; but
my duty was in every instance much facilitated, and it would be unjust
in me not to mention it. I acknowledge my obligations to all the medical
gentlemen of the Indian army, by whom I was most cordially and well
seconded in all that I undertook.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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