No. 1156.

FROM

THE SURGEON-GENERAL, INDIAN MEDICAL DEPARTMENT,

To

THE SECRETARY TO THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA,

MILITARY DEPARTMENT.

Fort William, the 12th of November 1877.

SIR,

    I HAVE the honor to forward, for submission to the Right Hon'ble
the Governor General in Council, the Medical and Sanitary Report of the
Native Army in the Bengal Presidency for the year 1876 (forming the ninth
of the series), the compilation of which has been completed, under my superin-
tendence, by Surgeon-Major J. Browne, M. D., 41st Regiment Bengal Native
Infantry, my Officiating Secretary.

Compilation
of report.

    2. The orders conveyed in your docket Reports/Administrative' No. 328, of the
16th of June last, have not been lost sight of by me; and I have spared
no exertions in trying to ensure the earlier compilation of this report; but I
regret to say that a few medical officers (mostly junior in the service, for whom,
perhaps, an excuse will be accepted on the score of inexperience) were unable
from some cause or other to render their figured returns correctly, until they
had been sent back for revision several times, the last only reaching this Office
in a perfect shape on the 19th September. However, notwithstanding these
delays, I was able to send the first instalment of my manuscript to the press on
the 16th of July, and since then the succeeding portions of it were forwarded
without any interruption. Next year I would fain hope that the officers
who have created difficulty in the compilation of the present report will have
so far benefited by their additional experience, as to steer clear of the errors
and omissions which have led to so much correspondence and avoidable delay,
and thus enable me to expedite still more in 1878 the submission of the
report of the current year, so as to meet more fully the instructions of the
Right Hon'ble the Secretary of State for India.

The delay in
the earlier
submission of
the report has
been unavoid-able.

STATEMENT No, I,

    3. In Statement No. 1 is shewn the strength (present, absent and total) of
the Native Army serv-
ing in the Bengal Pre-
sidency during 1876.
In this statement, the
strength, "present" will
be understood to denote
that which supplied the
admissions into hospital,
while the strength "ab-
sent" accounts for those
men who were away
from their regiments on
furlough, sick leave,
&c., and also for those
small detachments from which no statistical returns were received, in

Strength of
the Army.