Disease, not combat, destroyed a third of Muhammad Ali’s Sudan army within months

Evidence

As in his attempt to control smallpox, the plague and cholera, the Pasha learned his lesson the hard way. In the early months of the disastrous Sudan campaign the army that he sent down there lost 600 men who fell dead of various diseases. Owing to the lack of doctors, medicine and qualified medical personnel the number of dead in September 1821 rose to 600 in addition to 2,000 men who had fallen prey to various diseases. The following month the number of dead rose even further to 1,500: this in an army of three thousand troops. Even after that army had managed to secure 20,000 black slaves and to send them down the Nile to Egypt, these unfortunate people could not survive the trip and were falling “like sheep with the rot” prompting the Pasha, as we saw in chapter 2 above, to ask Boghus Bey, his Armenian advisor for foreign affairs, to fetch him some American doctors who might be useful in treating the slaves. The Morean campaign was similarly ill equipped, with doctors and medical supplies often sent after the departure of the military units they were supposed to serve, and when these medical supplies were finally received, they were often found to be defective. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1116