We need not go abroad to find proofs of the waste of life in military
camps. Our own army, in the war with Great Britain in 1812-14, suffered,
as the European armies have done, by sickness and death, far beyond men
in civil occupations. There are no comprehensive reports, published by
the Government, of the sanitary condition and history of the army on the
Northern frontier during that war. But the partial and fragmentary
statements of Dr. Mann, in his "Medical Sketches," and the occasional
and apparently incidental allusions to the diseases and deaths by the
commanding officers, in their letters and despatches to the Secretary of
War, show that sickness was sometimes fearfully prevalent and fatal
among our soldiers. Dr. Mann says: "One regiment on the frontier, at one
time, counted 900 strong, but was reduced, by a total want of a good
police, to less than 200 fit for duty." "At one period more than 340
were in the hospitals, and, in addition to this, a large number were
reported sick in camp."[23] "The aggregate of the army at Fort George
and its dependencies was about 5,000. From an estimate of the number
sick in the general and regimental hospitals, it was my persuasion that
but little more than half of the army was capable of duty, at one
period, during the summer months"[24] of 1813. "During the month of
August more than one-third of the soldiers were on the sick-reports."[25]
Dr. Mann quotes Dr. Lovell, another army-surgeon, who says,
in the autumn of 1813: "A morning report, now before me, gives 75
sick, out of a corps of 160. The several regiments of the army, in their
reports, exhibit a proportional number unfit for duty."[26] Dr. Mann
states that "the troops at Burlington, Vt., in the winter of 1812-13,
did not number over 1,600, and the deaths did not exceed 200, from the
last of November to the last of February."[27] But Dr. Gallup says: "The
whole number of deaths is said to be not less than 700 to 800 in four
months," and "the number of soldiers stationed at this encampment
[Burlington] was about 2,500 to 2,800."[28] According to Dr. Mann's
statement, the mortality was at the annual rate of 50 per cent.; and
according to that of Dr. Gallup, it was at the rate of 75 to 96 per
cent. This is nearly equal to the severest mortality in the Crimea.
General William H. Harrison, writing to the Secretary of War from the
borders of Lake Erie, Aug. 29, 1813, says: "You can form some estimate
of the deadly effects of the immense body of stagnant water with which
the vicinity of the lake abounds, from the state of the troops at
Sandusky. Upwards of 90 are this morning reported sick, out of about
220." This is a rate of over 40 per cent. "Those at Fort Meigs are not
much better."[29]
General Wilkinson wrote from Fort George, Sept. 16, 1813: "We count, on
paper, 4,600, and could show 3,400 combatants"; that is, 25 per cent,
and more are sick. "The enemy, from the best information we have, have
about 3,000 on paper, of whom 1,400," or 46.6 per cent., "are sick."[30]