In the hospitals of the allied forces, during the campaign of the Crimea,
which were established along the banks of the Bosphorus and at
Constantinople, there were admitted, during the twenty-two months of the
war, one hundred and thirty-nine thousand patients, and of these nineteen
per cent. were lost during the entire period, or at the rate of ten per
cent. per annum.
One hundred and ninety-three thousand patients were admitted into the
French hospitals during the same period, and but fourteen per cent. were
lost, or less than eight per cent. per annum.
The mortality of the military hospitals of the army of occupation of Spain
in 1824 was less than five per cent.
The extemporized and regular hospitals of Milan, says Baron Larrey,
received during the Italian campaign thirty-four thousand sick and
wounded; of whom fourteen hundred died, or four per cent., or forty men
out of every one thousand. The temporary hospitals of Nashville received
during the year 1864 sixty-five thousand sick and wounded, of whom
twenty-six hundred died, or four per cent. The numerous hospitals of
Washington treated in 1863 sixty-eight thousand patients, and lost
twenty-six hundred, or less than four per cent.; and, in 1864, the same
hospitals treated ninety-six thousand patients (forty-nine thousand sick
and forty-seven thousand wounded), and lost six thousand, or six per cent.
The department of Pennsylvania received fifty-six thousand patients in its
various hospitals, and lost but two per cent. Twenty-nine thousand nine
hundred patients were cared for in the medical and surgical wards of the
fourteen great civil hospitals of London in 1861, and but twenty-seven
hundred of these died, or nine per cent. The diary of the rebel War Clerk
says, that in the hospitals of the rebel service sixteen hundred thousand
patients were treated, with a loss of four per cent.; yet it appears from
a surreptitious copy of the quarterly report ending 1864, relating to the
prisoners in hospital at Richmond, that twenty-seven hundred patients were
treated, and thirteen hundred and ninety-six died, or fifty per cent.;
more than half of these cases were those of diarrhoea and dysentery, and
only seventy deaths from fever. It appears from the official data of the
Surgeon-General's office, published in November, 1865, that eight hundred
and seventy thousand cases of wounds and disease were treated by the
medical staff of the United States army in 1862, and but two per cent.
were lost; also, that in 1863, seventeen hundred thousand cases were cared
for, with a loss of three per cent. only.