An eminent statistician has stated that mortality is in direct ratio to
the density of population, and that superficial area is as essential to
health as cubic space. To the writer's mind, the overcrowding of the men,
and their exposure to the variations of heat and cold, the influence of
moisture, and the foul emanations of the infected soil, were sufficient to
cause great destruction of human life; and when combined with the
deficient dietary, the imagination can hardly conceive of a better field
for disease and death than the condition of this swarming pen. All the
elements and combinations of physical destructiveness were here in full
play. "Losses by battle," says Sir Charles Napier, "sink to nothing,
compared with those inflicted by improperly constructed barracks, and the
jamming of soldiers--no other word is sufficiently expressive."
"Diseases," states the French Inspector Baudens, "slay more men than steel
or powder, and it is often easy to prevent them by a few simple hygienic
precautions."
In all campaigns where the care of the soldier is left to the military
man,--who is educated for destruction, and has not been taught in the
economy of life,--we see in the mortuary and non-efficient lists a
disgraceful and culpable array of thoughtless routine, vulgar prejudices,
and systems. In our Military Academies the elements and the means of
destruction are taught, but not a law unfolded that relates to the
principles of health, strength, and life. To alleviate the burden of the
military list by sanitary measures is an idea unheard of, or at least
unnoticed. "For these works," writes Chadwick, in his papers on "Economy,"
"a special training is needed for our military engineers, whose present
peculiar training is only for old works for war, and for those
imperfectly,--works for the maintenance of the health of an army being
necessary means to the maintenance of its military strength.
"The one-sided character of the common training of our military engineers
was displayed in the Crimea, in the proved need of a sanitary commission
to give instruction for the selection and the practical drainage of proper
sites for healthy encampments, for the choice collection and the proper
distribution of wholesome water, for the construction of wholesome huts,
and the proper shelter and treatment of horses as well as men."