Observations on the means of forming and maintaining troops in health in different climates and localities / by Edward Balfour.

Date:
[1845]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the means of forming and maintaining troops in health in different climates and localities / by Edward Balfour. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    when being raised.* The Talain corps in Burmah, and the Nair brigade on the Malabar coast, are perhaps the only instances in the Madras Presidency of the adoption of this principle. The Ahmednugger police corps, raised among the Mhars, Ramossies and Bheels of the neighbourhood, to occupy the posts along the hill ranges of the Dekhan; the Bheel corps, formed to coerce their own tribes among the hills and valleys of Guzerat and Candeish; the Tannah and Concan, or Rutnagheree rangers, holding posts between the Concan and the Dekhan, are instances of the employment of the aborigines as troops by the Bombay government, who retain other local corps in several parts of the country. In Bengal there are more than 30 irregular corps of foot and horse, many of them employed for purely local purposes; and in Bombay they are as much required as in Bengal, because the humid atmo- sphere among the forests and western ghats, and the hot, moist climate of Guzerat, is found as inimical to the health of the Rajahpoots and natives of the Dekhan, of whom the regiments of the Bombay Presidency are composed, as the almost similar climates of the provinces of Bengal and Arracan are to their Bengal comrades. * Though the Indian armies are employed in Asia, and therefore in countries not altogether dissimilar in climate and products to that of their native provinces, there are, nevertheless, marked differences in climate existing in consequence both of latitudes and altitudes. And not more than half the Madras army, and about the same number of the Bengal troops, are at any time serving in the ter- ritories of which they are, strictly speaking, natives ; while nearly the whole of the Bombay army are strangers in the countries in which they are employed. London t—Printed by Luke James Hansard, near LincolnVInn Fields.