Nations, when they go to war, prepare to inflict injury and death on
their opponents, and make up their minds to receive the same in return;
but they seem neither to look nor to prepare for sickness and death in
their camps. And when these come upon their armies, they seem either to
shut their eyes to the facts, or submit to the loss as to a disturbance
in Nature, a storm, a drought, or an earthquake, which they can neither
prevent nor provide for, and for which they feel no responsibility, but
only hope that it will not happen again. Nevertheless, this waste of
life has followed every army which has been made to violate the laws of
health, in privations, exposures, and hardships, and whose internal
history is known. The experience of such disastrous campaigns ought to
induce Governments to inquire into the causes of the suffering and loss,
and to learn whether they are not engaged in a struggle against Nature,
in which they must certainly fail, and endeavoring to make the human
body bear burdens and labors which are beyond its strength. But
Governments are slow to learn, especially sanitary lessons. The British
army suffered and died in great numbers at Walcheren and South Beveland,
in the middle of the last century. Pringle described the sad condition
of those troops, and warned his nation against a similar exposure; yet,
sixty years later, the Ministry sent another army to the same place, to
sink under the malarious influences and diseases in the same way. The
English troops at Jamaica were stationed in the low grounds, where, "for
many generations," "the average annual mortality was 13 per cent." "A
recommendation for their removal from the plains to the mountains was
made so far back as 1791. Numerous reports were sent to the Government,
advising that a higher situation should be selected"; but it was not
until 1837, after nearly half a century of experience and warning, that
the Ministry opened their eyes to this cost of life and money in
excessive sickness and mortality, and then removed the garrison to
Maroontown, where the death-rate fell to 2 per cent., or less than
one-sixth of what it had been[50].
The American army, in the war with Great Britain fifty years ago,
suffered from the want of proper provision for their necessities and
comfort, from exposures and hardships, so that sometimes half its force
was unavailable; yet, at the present moment, a monstrous army is
collected and sent to the field, under the same regulations, and with
the same idea of man's indefinite power of endurance, and the
responsibility and superintendence of their health is left, in large
measure, to an accidental and outside body of men, the Sanitary
Commission, which, although an institution of great heart and energy,
and supported by the sympathies and cooperation of the whole people, is
yet doing a work that ought to be done by the Government, and carrying
out a plan of operations that should be inseparably associated with the
original creation of the army and the whole management of the war.