| Monarch, | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 22d Nov. | | | | | | | | | | | | | +---------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+ | Alfred, | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 22d November | | | | | 6 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 15 | 16 | 11 | 8 | +---------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+ We shall hereafter see reason for supposing that fever and dysentery proceed from the same cause; and as both these ships arrived from England in a similar state with regard to health, fevers would probably have been the prevailing disease in both; but a part of the 87th regiment, then serving as marines in the fleet, was put on board of the Torbay at St. Christopher’s, and some of them being ill of the dysentery, gave this turn to the disease which afterwards prevailed on board. I have formed a Table to shew the fluctuating state of these two diseases, and this was one of my first and most imperfect attempts towards a medical history of the fleet in a methodical way. (Table III.) There was but little sickness in the rest of this squadron, except in the Terrible, where the dysentery prevailed a good deal. None of the ships of the line which we found in the West Indies, upon our arrival there, were now in company, except the Yarmouth, and this was the most healthy of all the ships that went to North America. The health of the fleet was very much recruited by its short stay in America; for the men were supplied with fresh meat and spruce beer, and they enjoyed the two finest months of the year in that temperate climate. The squadron left New York in the middle of November, and though dispersed by a violent storm, all the ships arrived safe in the West Indies before the middle of December. In October the fleet had attained such a degree of health, that though the calculation in the Table is made from five of the most sickly ships, no death happened in this month on board of any of them. In November the mortality was also inconsiderable, though the ships left in the West Indies are included in the calculation; which, had it been made upon those only that went to North America, the deaths would have been no more than one in seven hundred and eleven in this month, which is rather less than that of any other month in the Table.