But one terror struck all ranks, and Minorcans too: illness and epidemics that brought death. The following letter from a naval officer to Jolliffe Tufnell, of Langley near Chelmsford (preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford) vividly describes the prevailing conditions:

 
Sept. the 16th Old Style 
1740, at Sea

Dearest Brother,
  I shall now give you an account of what passes with us, as we have no other news in these parts.
  One of the most material is how narrowly we escaped the Plague at Mahon by a French settee from Algiers, where the Plague rages very fiercely. Coming into the harbour, Major de Maw, belonging to St Philip's, going abroad to buy some things, when he was alongside saw one man upon deck with his head muffled up. On enquiring, he had one of the plague glands on his throat. And the rest of the men being all sick of it, they were ordered to leave the Harbour immediately which they did.
In case the officer had not been in the produce boat himself, for a little money they would have admitted them.
A spotted fever [smallpox] has raged all over the fleet in a manner almost as bad, taking off twelve or thirteen men daily; so that Mr. Haddock's fleet has buried twelve hundred and upward.

Dear Brother, most affectionately yrs.

 George Tufnell

It was not without reason that British troops christened the King's Island in Port Mahon on which the military hospital was built 'Bloody Island'.

Dr George Cleghorn, MD, arrived in Minorca to tackle such problems in 1736, as surgeon to the 22nd Regiment of Foot. He was a brilliant physician, and during a tour of duty that lasted thirteen years distinguished himself as a clinician and research worker on Mediterranean diseases. He was born near Edinburgh in 1716, and at an early age showed a remarkable gift for the classics; his later medical treatises were written in Latin. At the age of fifteen he resolved to study physic and surgery, a fortunate choice as the Edinburgh Medical School was at that time, together with Leyden, unrivalled in Europe.
As was then the custom he was apprenticed to a doctor, the famous Alexander Monro, as his personal pupil. He lived in Monro's home, where he was joined a few years later by Dr James Fothergill, who guided him in the earlier part of his career. At the age of twenty, he was posted as surgeon to Minorca, under the command of General St Clair.
Whatever time could be spared from his official duties Cleghorn employed by investigating the nature of epidemic diseases as modified by climate, and in gratifying his passion for anatomy and dissection. In the meantime his good friend Dr Fothergill was indefatigable in searching the London shops for the books he wanted, and sending them to him as best he could.

The commonest diseases then prevalent were plague, cholera and smallpox, typhoid, pneumonia, malaria and gastro intestinal diseases. The even tenor of life and relaxed existence of British officers' families on the 'Summer Island' was often broken by serious illness and death.
Smallpox was brought from Constantinople by one of His Majesty's ships in 1745, and spread over the whole island. Cleghorn wrote: 'It carried off nearly all the children who survived the chin-cough [whooping cough?] and the summer fever.' There had been a previous epidemic in March 1742, with many deaths among both English children and soldiers, so that 'every house might be called a hospital'. The hot summer months were generally considered unhealthy for children, many dying from cholera and tertian fever (malaria).
Although the connection between malaria and the mosquito was then unknown, Cleghorn was already using cinchona bark (quinine) in the treatment of this fever, and mosquito nets were in regular use. 'Of all our Insects,' wrote Armstrong, 'this Musquita is the most troublesome, and if it were not for the Canopies of Gauze and Muslin with which our beds are constantly enclosed during the hot Months, it would be impossible to get a night's rest.'

Cleghorn sent the records of his research regularly to his friend Fothergill, but it was not until his return to England in 1749 that his colleague helped him put his notes together in English for publication in 1750 of his book Observations on the Epidemical Diseases in Minorca from I744 to I749. This went through four editions. In the latter part of his life he was Lecturer in Anatomy at the University of Dublin. His portrait shows him as a kindly, studious man.

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