Two causes of depression operate, to a considerable degree in peace and
to a very great degree in war, on the soldier, and reduce and sicken him
more than the civilian. His vital force is not so well sustained by
never-failing supplies of nutritious and digestible food and regular
nightly sleep, and his powers are more exhausted in hardships and
exposures, in excessive labors and want of due rest and protection
against cold and heat, storms and rains. Consequently the army suffers
mostly from diseases of depression,--those of the typhoid, adynamic, and
scorbutic types. McGrigor says, that, in the British army in the
Peninsula, of 176,007 cases treated and recorded by the surgeons, 68,894
were fevers, 23,203 diseases of the bowels, 12,167 ulcers, and 4,027
diseases of the lungs.[46] In the British hospitals in the Crimean War,
39 per cent. were cholera, dysentery, and diarrhoea, 19 per cent.
fevers, 1.2 per cent. scurvy, 8 per cent. diseases of the lungs, 8 per
cent. diseases of the skin, 3.3 per cent. rheumatism, 2.5 per cent.
diseases of the brain and nervous system, 1.4 per cent. frost-bite or
mortification produced by low vitality and chills, 13, or one in 12,000,
had sunstroke, 257 had the itch, and 68 per cent. of all were of the
zymotic class,[47] which are considered as principally due to privation,
exposure, and personal neglect. The deaths from these classes of causes
were in a somewhat similar proportion to the mortality from all stated
causes,--being 58 per cent. from cholera, dysentery, and diarrhoea, and
1 per cent. from all other disorders of the digestive organs, 19 per
cent. from fevers, 3.6 per cent. from diseases of the lungs, 1.3 per
cent. from rheumatism, 1.3 per cent. from diseases of the brain and
nervous system, and 79 per cent. from those of the zymotic class. The
same classes of disease, with a much larger proportion of typhoid,
pneumonia, prostrated and destroyed many in the American army in the War
of 1812.
In paper No. 40, p. 54, of the Sanitary Commission, is a report of the
diseases that occurred in forty-nine regiments, while under inspection
about forty days each, between July and October, 1861. 27,526 cases were
reported; of these 67 per cent. were zymotic, 41 per cent. diseases of
the digestive organs, 22 per cent. fevers 7 per cent. diseases of the
lungs, 5 per cent. diseases of the brain. Among males of the army-ages
the proportions of deaths from these classes of causes to those from all
causes were, in Massachusetts, in 1859, zymotic 15 per cent., diseases
of digestive organs 3.6 per cent., of lungs 50 per cent., fevers 9 per
cent., diseases of brain 4.6 per cent[48]. According to the
mortality-statistics of the seventh census of the United States, of the
males between the ages of twenty and fifty, in Maryland, Virginia, North
Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, whose deaths in the year ending
June 1st, 1850, and their causes, were ascertained and reported by the
marshals, 34.3 per cent. died of zymotic diseases, 8 per cent. of all
the diseases of the digestive organs, 30.8 per cent. of diseases of the
respiratory organs, 24.4 per cent. of fevers, and 5.7 per cent. of
disorders of the brain and nervous system. In England and Wales, in
1858, these proportions were, zymotic 14 per cent., fevers 8 per cent.,
diseases of digestive organs 7.9 per cent., of lungs 8 per cent., and of
the brain 7 per cent[49].
If, however, we analyze the returns of mortality in civil life, and
distinguish those of the poor and neglected dwellers in the crowded and
filthy lanes and alleys of cities, whose animal forces are not well
developed, or are reduced by insufficient and uncertain nutrition, by
poor food or bad cookery, by foul air within and stenchy atmosphere
without, by imperfect protection of house and clothing, we shall find
the same diseases there as in the army. Wherever the vital forces are
depressed, there these diseases of low vitality happen most frequently
and are most fatal.
Volumes of other facts and statements might be quoted to show that
military service is exhaustive of vital force more than the pursuits of
civil life. It is so even in time of peace, and it is remarkably so in
time of war. Comparing the English statements of the mortality in the
army with the calculations of the expectation of life in the general
community, the difference is at once manifest.
Of 10,000 men at the age of twenty, there will die before they complete
their fortieth year,--
British army in time of peace, 3,058
England and Wales, English Life-Table, 1,853
According to tables of Amicable and
Equitable Life-Insurance Companies, 1,972
New England and New York, according
to the tables of the New-England
Mutual Life-Insurance Company, 1,721