DEATHS IN 10,000.
Age Civilians Foot-Guards Home-Army
20 to 25 84 216 170
25 to 30 92 211 183
30 to 35 102 195 184
35 to 40 116 224 193
Through the fifteen years from 1839 to 1853 inclusive, the annual
mortality of all the army, excepting the artillery, engineers, and West
India and colonial corps, was 330 among 10,000 living; while that among
the same number of males of the army-ages, in all England and Wales, was
92, and in the healthiest districts only 77.[6]
There is no official account at hand of the general mortality in the
Russian army on the peace-establishment; yet, according to Boudin, in
one portion, consisting of 192,834 men, 144,352 had been sick, and
7,541, or 38 per 1,000, died in one year.[7]
The Prussian army, with an average of 150,582 men, lost by death, during
the ten years 1829 to 1838, 1,975 in each year, which is at the rate of
13 per 1,000 living.[8]
The mortality of the Piedmontese army, from 1834 to 1843 inclusive, was
158 in 10,000, while that of the males at home was 92 in the same number
living.
From 1775 to 1791, seventeen years, the mortality among the cavalry was
181, and among the infantry 349, out of 10,000 living; but in the ten
years from 1834 to 1843 these rates were only 108 and 215.[9]
Colored troops are employed by the British Government in all their
colonies and possessions in tropical climates. The mortality of these
soldiers is known, and also that of the colored male civilians in the
East Indies and in the West-India Islands and South-American Provinces.
In four of these, the rate of mortality is higher among the male slaves
than among the colored soldiers; but in all the others, this rate is
higher in the army. In all the West-Indian and South-American
possessions of Great Britain, the average rate of deaths is 25 per cent,
greater among the black troops than among the black males of all ages on
the plantations and in the towns. The soldiers are of the healthier
ages, 20 to 40, but the civilians include both the young and the old: if
these could be excluded, and the comparison made between soldiers and
laborers of the same ages, the difference in favor of civil pursuits
would appear much greater.
Throughout the world, where the armies of Great Britain are stationed or
serve, the death-rate is greater among the troops than among civilians
of the same races and ages, except among the colored troops in Tobago,
Montserrat, Antigua, and Granada in America, and among the Sepoys in the
East Indies.[10]
In the army of the United States, during the period from 1840 to 1854,
not including the two years of the Mexican War, there was an average of
9,278 men, or an aggregate of 120,622 years of service, equal to so many
men serving one year. Among these and during this period, there were
342,107 cases of sickness reported by the surgeons, and 3,416 deaths
from disease, showing a rate of mortality of 2.83 per cent., or two and
a half times as great as that among the males of Massachusetts of the
army-ages, and three times as great as that in England and Wales. The
attacks of sickness average almost three for each man in each year. This
is manifestly more than that which falls upon men of these ages at
home.[11]