The mortality among the men admitted at this time was greater than what occurred afterwards in any of the hospitals that I attended, except that at Jamaica. The principal cause of this was, that as the fleet was so much greater than had ever been known here before, there was not suitable accommodation for such numbers as it was necessary to send on shore, and we had not then fallen on the method of supplying refreshments to the men on board of their ships. The circumstance by which the men suffered most was, the great crowding which the want of room made necessary. There is here no public building appropriated for an hospital; so that this, as well as every thing else, being found by contract, and the number of sick being so much greater than it was usual to provide for, the whole was at this time conducted in a manner not very regular. It appears that the greatest mortality in any class of disease was that of the fluxes, of which the greatest number sent to hospitals are such as have languished for some time under this disease, in which state it generally proves fatal in the West Indies, in consequence of incurable ulcers in the great intestines, to which the heat of the climate, as well as the scorbutic habit and sea diet, is particularly unfavourable. But the whole of the mischief arising from it does not appear in the table; for it was the most apt of any disease to supervene upon other complaints which were under cure at the hospital. It more particularly attacked those who were recovering from the scurvy, and was the cause of the greater number of deaths under this head in the table. It was found to be more contagious than fevers, either because the men’s constitutions were more predisposed to it, or, perhaps, because the infectious matter of it being more gross and less volatile, it is not so readily dissipated by the heat of the climate; for, either from this, or some other circumstance, infectious fevers are not so easily generated, nor so apt to spread, as in Europe. That these fluxes were owing to infection may be inferred from hence, that, when men ill of the scurvy were cured on board of the ships they belonged to, they were not liable to this disease, neither did they prevail at these hospitals afterwards, when great care was taken to separate infectious diseases from the others. The only regular hospital on this station is that at Antigua. This island being the seat of the royal dock yard, there is an established hospital in time of peace as well as war. It so happened, that great fleets never came here to put their sick and wounded on shore, as at Barbadoes; so that the greater number of those received into it were from single ships that came to careen. As there was, therefore, less necessity for crowding, and as the slighter cases could be admitted, there was a less proportion of deaths here than at most of the other hospitals.