A hundred years ago a prolonged residence in the Tropics was regarded with well-founded horror. The best the white settler in the lands of the sun dared hope for was “a short life and a merry one,” but too often the merriment was sadly lacking.

When Clive’s father made interest to get his son a writership under “Old John Company,” and packed off the troublesome lad to India, he probably regarded it as a last resource, and felt much as if he had signed the youth’s doom; but an age that hanged for sheep-stealing, or less, was like to be stern in its dealings with its children.

We know now that what the father took for vice was but evidence of the superabundant vitality of a genius, and being one, Clive naturally possessed the originality to modify his habits to his new surroundings, and so survived to become an Empire-builder and hero. Nor was the case exceptional, for looking back on the history of our great Indian dependency, one cannot fail to be struck with the high average ability of the few who survived to attain leading positions.

Furlough to Europe was almost impossible, and the hills were unknown, but in spite of this, many of these seasoned veterans who had learned their lesson lived, in the land of their adoption, to a green old age. But the rank and file, who could not or would not learn, died off like rotten sheep; and to this day it is the young and inexperienced, who have as yet not learned to adapt and protect themselves, who fall the readiest victims. At home it is, I believe, generally recognised that at the age of 26 a man is rather past his best from the athletic point of view, and it is hardly to be supposed that he is not equally at his fittest before that age, simply because he has shifted his domicile a couple of thousand miles to the south; but so fatal is the want of caution and intolerance of precaution inherent in early manhood, that most authorities recommend that, if possible, emigration to a hot climate should be postponed till the age of 25. This obstinate determination to carry to tropical parts habits of life suitable only to the more temperate parts of Europe was carried in old times to an almost incredible extent.

Now and again, in the guest-chamber of some native noble’s house, one may come across quaint old paintings and engravings which show our great grandfathers fighting or playing cricket in exactly the same costume as their contemporaries at home. No alteration whatever was made in the soldier’s dress, and his officers duelled, drank, and gambled in the same old Ramillies wigs that led such portentous gravity to those charming discussions with the enemy as to who should “fire first.” Even the earlier files of the Illustrated London News show the same things, and looking at these old pictures, the wonder is not so much that many succumbed as that any survived. Even in Europe the conditions of military service were terribly unhealthy, and when transplanted to the Tropics the mortality was such as to give to India and other hot countries an evil reputation which they have not yet lived down.

The dire struggle of the Indian Mutiny led to the first attempts to clothe and treat the soldier in a somewhat more rational fashion, and since then great improvements have been effected; but a great deal more remains to be done, especially in the matter of utilising our recently gained knowledge of the causation of malaria, before our military statistics can be expected to show how little this evil reputation is due to the climate itself, and how much has really been caused by human misdirection. No amount of sanitary improvement can be expected to render Bombay a comfortable place of residence in the dog days, and apart from localities at considerable elevations, where the climate is really temperate, it is hopeless to expect that anything in the way of actual colonisation can succeed in the climates with which we are dealing; but with due care and attention to sanitary laws, as modified by the altered conditions, there is no reason why the rates of sickness and mortality should be much more formidable than elsewhere.

In the following pages the writer has endeavoured to put into popular form the principal points of personal hygiene as applied to hot countries, and as they are intended mainly for the non-professional reader, all technical terms have been, as far as possible, avoided, and words in popular use, such as germs, &c., have been substituted for the more exact nomenclature of science. Should any of his medical colleagues care to read a merely popular work, they can easily supply for themselves, in place of these vague, popular words, the more precise terminology in use amongst ourselves.

The climates of the hotter parts of the world vary even more widely than those of the temperate zone, so that it is often impossible to offer suggestions applicable to all of them; and on this account it is extremely important that the intending resident or visitor to them should be able to ascertain what is the exact nature of the climatic conditions with which he will have to cope, so that it is absolutely essential to include within the scope of a work like the present some account of the climates of the various countries included in the enormous area under consideration. On this account the little book has been divided into two distinct parts, the first of which is devoted to personal tropical hygiene, while the second, which deals with climate, is necessarily mainly a dry mass of tabulated information, of which only the few pages devoted to the country he proposes to visit is likely to interest the individual reader.

The inclusion of information of the sort is, however, quite essential, as it is by no means easily accessible, and, as a matter of fact, scarcely exists, except in the form of the official records of the various meteorological observatories, so that when collecting data for the compilation of this second part, or appendix, on tropical climates, the writer was a good deal surprised to find that he was engaged in the preparation of what is really a pioneer work on the subject in the English language.

This being the case, it has been thought well to publish these outlines of tropical climatology also in a separate form for the use of the professional reader who may not care to be burdened with a booklet on health treated from the popular point of view; a step which has further necessitated that the paging and indexing of the two parts should be kept separate from each other, a plan which, in view of the moderate dimensions of the book, might otherwise have appeared rather superfluous.