MORT POUR LA PATRIE.
If the French forces were to quit the Regency of Tunis to-morrow, the
most melancholy, and at the same time, almost the sole memorial of its
military occupation would be a series of little wayside cemeteries, in
which lie the real victims of the latest Punic War. At the entrance of
the summer palace of Kheir-ed-Din at the Goletta, under the shade of a
Moslem _kouba_ near the Manouba road, in the silent plains around
Ghardimaou, beneath the green palm-trees on the banks of the Gabes
river, amidst the sandy coast of Jerba, and within the burying-ground of
the Almoravides on the outskirts of holy Kairwan, groups of black wooden
crosses and turf-covered mounds mark the resting-places of many hundreds
of brave young soldiers, who left the smiling shores of France in all
the joyousness of enthusiasm of a first campaign, only to find a grave
in Africa.
If M. Roustan found his Nemesis in the Tribunal de la Seine, it was the
great sanitary controversy which hopelessly wrecked the fame and fortune
of his employers. The subject is beyond all doubt the saddest phase of
the Tunisian question, but its consideration cannot be omitted in any
impartial history of the campaign. If the untimely death of these two
thousand striplings amidst strangers in a foreign land, teaches
statesmen of all nations the danger of substituting duplicity for
diplomacy, they will not indeed have died in vain.
In the last chapter I have told the story of M. Saint-Hilaire’s account
in the witness-box of the origin of the Tunisian Expedition, but
unfortunately for himself and his country, and above all for the “brave
young troops,” he held very different language in the Chambers seven
months before. The following was the ministerial programme of the 12th
May:—
Military operations in Tunis will follow their regular course. A circle
has been closely drawn round the insurgent tribes. _The sanitary
condition of the troops is excellent, and testifies to the good working
of the service_. The troops have given solid proofs of their military
qualities, and if the enemy flies before them or submits, the honour
must be given to the discipline and energy of the soldier as much as to
the foresight of the commander. We are to-day permitted to hope that
military operations will be shortly concluded, the phase of negotiations
having now commenced. In entering Tunis we pursued the double object of
chastising the rebellious tribes which had violated our frontier for ten
years past, and of obtaining guarantees for the future. The present
sacrifices of France, undergone for the purpose of securing her
frontier, would not be sufficiently repaid by a seeming and precarious
submission, or by speedily forgotten promises. Our safety requires
durable pledges, and these we demand from the Bey of Tunis. We have no
designs upon his territory or upon his throne. The Republic, in
commencing the expedition, solemnly repudiated all idea of annexation or
conquest, and it to-day renews the same declarations; but the Government
of the Bey is bound to allow us to take in his territory, for the
protection of our possessions, and to the extent which our interests
demand, those measures of precaution which he is manifestly unable to
take with his own unassisted force. Formal conventions will have to
place our legitimate influence in the Regency beyond the reach of
hostile designs or adventures. We trust that the Bey will himself
recognise its necessity and advantage, and that we shall be able thus to
terminate a difference which concerns France alone, which places French
interests only at stake, and which France has the right to settle on her
own account with the Bey in that spirit of justice, moderation, and
scrupulous respect for European law which governs the policy of the
French Republic.
It is in the essential difference between these two statements that we
have to seek for the origin of the typhoid fever and dysentery which has
deprived France of so many of her children. M. Saint-Hilaire deceived
not only Lord Granville and Signor Cairoli,—he deceived France, he
deceived the army, and he deceived himself. If he had said in April that
he was going to “carry out the traditions of his predecessors” and send
the French forces to practically conquer Tunis, a _corps d’armée_ would
have been mobilised, a proper ambulance and hospital service organised,
and care taken not to bring soldiers from infected stations. But he said
nothing of the kind: all he spoke of then was “a military promenade of
ten days—a fortnight at the most,” “a rapid march against the Khamírs
and back into Algeria,” and “a week’s expedition for which no
preparations were necessary.” The frontier was crossed with such ideas
as these, and what were the consequences? To the entry into Khamír-land
succeeded the capture of Kef; the fall of Kef was followed by the
occupation of Bizerta; after Bizerta came the march to the Bardo; the
sequel to the treaty of Kasr-es-Said was the bombardment of Sfax and the
concentric movement on Kairwán. The “military promenade of ten days—a
fortnight at the most,” became an expedition, and the expedition became
an occupation, but no serious preparations were made either for one or
the other—_hinc illæ lacrimæ_. This, however, is not all. M. Barthélémy
Saint-Hilaire not only indulged in the utmost conceivable stretch of the
elasticity of diplomatic language, but he adopted a baneful fiction and
stuck to it. “Tunis,” said this Aristotelian politician, “is at peace
with France; Muhamed es Sadek is our ally: there can be no war between
us, and the soldiers of the Republic must act accordingly. The persons
and property of Tunisians must under all circumstances be respected.” It
was these considerations which prevented houses and other buildings from
being taken for hospital purposes; it was the attempt to solve the
riddle of “when is a war not a war?” which condemned hundreds of sick
soldiers to lie and die under the scant shelter of portable tents that
afforded no adequate protection against either sun or rain. In short, it
was this unhappy conjunction of falsehood and fiction, which set the
ball of epidemic sickness rolling; and when it once began to roll, no
amount of subsequent care and attention could possibly stop it. Add to
the primary causes, a large admixture of red-tapeism, a fair amount of
jealousy of any interference from a Red Cross Society, and no fellow-
feeling between the medical officers and the _Intendance_, and we have
the secret of the mortality amongst the French troops in Tunis, which
even the _Havas_ failed to explain, and official denials were powerless
to conceal.
The three witnesses I propose to examine as to the merits of the
sanitary controversy are, Dr. Lereboullet, M. Amadée Le Faure, and Dr.
Samuel Pozzi. The first two have spoken at length elsewhere, although
the voice of one of them is now silent for ever. The criticisms of Dr.
Pozzi I heard from his own lips during the time we were fellow
passengers on the “Valette” between Susa and Tripoli. May the wisdom of
those three patriotic Frenchmen profit France in the future! Amadée Le
Faure consecrated and intensified his words of warning by a death from
fever caught while exploring the typhoid-stricken hospitals which rose
as the natural consequence of M. Barthélémy Saint-Hilaire’s “military
promenade of ten days—a fortnight at the most, which required no sort of
preparations,” and for which beds, bedding, and medicines seemed to be
considered wholly superfluous.
Early in October M. Lereboullet published his examination of the
sanitary condition of the troops in Tunis in the _Gazette hebdomadaire
de Médecine et de Chirurgie_. The _Télégraphe_ sent M. Amadée Le Faure,
Deputy of La Creuse, to Tunis, for the purpose of verifying M.
Lereboullet’s report. He did so, but at the cost of his life.
The following extracts from M. Lereboullet’s memoir sufficiently
illustrate the immediate consequences of M. Saint-Hilaire’s inexplicable
desire to deceive everybody:—
As far back as the 20th April, and even before we crossed the frontier,
the bread actually ran short. Only a third of the normal rations could
be distributed. Means of transport for the sick failed, and matters got
worse when we came to the Khamír country. On the 28th April, after a
day’s fighting, and a march through a district abounding in natural
difficulties, there was nothing but biscuit to eat. On the 8th May the
misery endured by the troops on the march is indescribable. A convoy was
then sent in search of provisions. On the 12th it had not yet returned,
and the meat supply failed. During the following days only the third of
a ration of mouldy bread was served out. On the 18th bread was wanting
during two days. The commissariat has shown itself to be incapable of
supplying an army of 12,000 men, and at a distance of less than forty
miles from the Algerian frontier. Not a potato or a drop of wine has
been sent to us. The water is undrinkable, and there is no tea. Since
the 20th April I have had no opium, or bismuth, or ipecacuanha, although
cases of dysentery are of daily occurrence. The debility of the men is
incredible.
This note was forwarded to M. Lereboullet by a regimental surgeon. A
second report from Kef was attested by several officers and medical
men:—
Since Kef was occupied a garrison of 1200 men has been stationed there.
_During three months_ there was no ambulance there whatever. The
officers opened a subscription amongst themselves to purchase medicines.
Before they did this there were already three deaths and seventeen cases
of fever. Subsequently an offer was made to reimburse the officers the
money they had expended, but it was indignantly refused.
Here is another communication from an official source:—
When the Logerot column marched on Kef a serious resistance was
expected. An hospital and a large provision depôt were accordingly
organised on the frontier. On Kef falling without a blow, General
Logerot descended rapidly the Medjerdah valley and occupied the railway
line. The base of operations was consequently changed. Ghardimaou, the
railway terminus, became the connecting link with the frontier and the
natural centre both for revictualling and hospital purposes. We came on
direct from Sidi Yusef to Ghardimaou. When we arrived there we were told
that as General Logerot got his supplies from Tunis, it was thought
useless to provision Ghardimaou. But all the sick belonging to the
Logerot column were there. The forty-six sick or wounded were left to
the care of one doctor, with only a few grammes of medicine and three
days’ provisions. In this manner they waited for ten days. The sick had
hardly anything to eat, were sleeping on a rug spread over the floor,
and with no other remedy than cocoa. The solitary doctor found his store
of medicines reduced to a packet of glycerine and some solution of
morphine. For three wounded soldiers it was necessary to gather herbs,
and make a rough kind of poultice.
M. Lereboullet continues:—
The orders for departure were given so suddenly to the battalions
selected in France, and they were subsequently embarked with such
rapidity, that no one ever thought of asking if such and such a
regiment, coming from a locality where epidemic sickness was rife, was
likely to spread the infection amongst the over-crowded barracks of
Algeria. This is precisely what occurred. Typhoid fever was prevalent at
Perpignan, and the disease broke out amongst the soldiers of the 142d
Regiment. A battalion of that regiment was sent to Bone and brought the
infection there.
The malady communicated itself to the 27th battalion of the _chasseurs-
à-pied_, and soon assumed alarming proportions. It could not well be
otherwise with hospitals crowded to overflowing, and no temporary
hospitals yet erected. Even as late as the 10th September I received the
following letter:—“We are here in a terrible plight from a sanitary
point of view. It is positively inhuman to treat the sick as we are
forced to do. A few beds and mattresses have just arrived. We have
utilised them for the worst cases. The others are lying on the ground
between two rugs or in litters. They are all dressed, without sheets,
and are placed side by side. I have two basins for the use of eighty
typhoid patients, and hardly any medicines. It is now three months that
A—— has been garrisoned. Of 2500 men, 500 have gone into hospital, 300
are convalescent, 85 are dead, and 80 are still down with more or less
severe typhoid fever. This is the sanitary condition at ——. It is the
same thing everywhere.” Ten days later another of my colleagues wrote to
me in a similar strain:—“I have 125 sick in my hospital. Nearly all of
them are down with typhoid fever, and unfortunately of an aggravated
form, for I have already lost twenty. It is like this all over the
country. Medicines, comforts, and above all linen, are everywhere
wanting. We cannot even attempt to put our poor typhoid patients on
beds. If we only had a sufficient number of litters, or even some clean
sheets and coverlids! But we have nothing of the kind. We are forced to
leave the sick dressed and without sheets between two blankets. Any
attempt to wash or disinfect them is out of the question, and we have
been in the field already for six months!” A third writes:—“In three
months I have treated 1200 sick, of which 80 died. In 78 of these cases
the disease was typhoid fever. Like the rest of my colleagues I received
orders to send to the Algerian hospitals all the sick who were not
absolutely in a dying condition. How many of them will survive the
journey performed while the disease is at its height?”
Now comes perhaps the gravest side of this sad story; another phase of
the same policy of external and internal deception and duplicity:—
I am credibly informed (continues M. Lereboullet) that in order to avoid
the sensation which the sending back to France of the sick belonging to
the expeditionary corps would have occasioned, the Minister of War
formally interdicted this very natural method of treating the invalids.
From similar motives leave was even refused to convalescent medical men.
In obedience to these orders the unfortunate typhoid patients were sent
to the hospitals of Bone, Philippeville, &c. Proper means of transport
did not exist. Then came the horrible spectacle of dying men being
trotted about from one hospital to the other on the backs of mules. It
often happened that in consequence of the total want of litters and
coverlids, the doctors refused to sign the certificates for the removal
of the patients, in order to avoid condemning them to a certain death. I
know one who protested in this manner during three days. At last he got
a formal order to let the patients start; they were placed on the backs
of mules, and afterwards conveyed by rail to the different hospitals,
where they nearly all arrived in a dying state. Several, I have reason
to believe, died on the road. In this manner the removal from the
tropical climate of Algeria, of men already worn out by fever and
fatigue, has been prevented, the hospitals unprovided with medicines,
and stores have been overcrowded, and typhoid patients have been left in
the delirium of fever under canvas tents, in which the temperature
sometimes reached 59 degrees centigrade. In the face of all this some
people profess to be astonished at the complaints made by every army
doctor and every officer, both against the Commissariat and the War
Office.
M. Lereboullet thus concludes his able report:—
To-day, in spite of the ministerial circulars which enjoin official
silence, some light at least has been thrown on the events which are
passing in Africa. The administration is endeavouring to attenuate the
responsibility of its agents, and measures which were scouted six months
ago are now being adopted. A sanitary camp has been now formed at
Porquerolles, and another will perhaps be organised at Hyères or
elsewhere. These steps are doubtless due to such reports as those I have
quoted. . . . With the removal of the sick to France, the erection of
temporary hospitals, approved means of transport, and abundance of every
conceivable kind of medical appliance, the evils I have denounced will
assuredly disappear.
At the time I am writing (April 1882) the French hospital service leaves
probably little to desire. This wholesome reformation at the eleventh
hour cannot, however, with any show of reason, be pleaded as an excuse
for gross mismanagement and crying abuses, which entailed a terrible and
gratuitous loss of valuable lives, and which might easily have been
avoided by the exercise of common sense and ordinary precautions on the
part of General Farre, and common honesty and straightforwardness on the
part of M. Barthélémy Saint-Hilaire. Public opinion has long since
passed its judgment on both: M. Saint-Hilaire has returned to his
cauliflowers and his Aristotle, while General Farre is represented in a
popular cartoon as seated on a heap of skulls, and playing on the
clarionet in the presence of the angel of death!
Nine short months before it was no other than General Farre who
announced the coming expedition to the Chamber of Deputies in the
following words:—
For three days past public opinion has been deeply moved by news from
the Tunis frontier (applause). I will trace in few words from the
official reports what has taken place. On March 30 the powerful tribe of
Khamírs, which nominally belongs to the Regency, made an incursion into
our territory, and attacked the Algerian tribes on the frontier. This
incursion was repulsed, but on March 31, instead of coming 400 or 500
strong, they were far more numerous, and their aggression assumed a
certain warlike importance. Two companies marched to succour the menaced
tribes. The engagement lasted eleven hours. We had four killed and six
wounded. The Algerian tribes who fought with us also suffered some loss.
In presence of these events, which surpass any of the heretofore too
frequent incursions, the Government has taken measures to prevent and
repress such acts for the future (loud cheers). As soon as a sufficient
force shall be concentrated we shall act against these robbers with all
the vigour called for by the situation (prolonged applause).
[Illustration: MAINTENANT, IL NOUS FAUDRAIT, POUR BIEN _FARRE_, UN PETIT
COMMANDEMENT MILITAIRE.
Reproduction by Maclure & Macdonald.]
The speaker has now probably learned a bitter lesson as to the
fickleness of public opinion, and the inexpediency of attempting to gain
the laurels of war by “a military promenade of ten days, or a fortnight
at the most.”
M. Baudoin, the principal medical officer in Tunis, had drawn up a
report on the sanitary condition of the army, which was now published in
order to allay, if possible, the impression created by Dr. Lereboullet’s
disclosures, but it had no other effect than that of provoking a
detailed and circumstantial rejoinder. It was under these circumstances
that the talented and conscientious Amadée Le Faure came to see things
for himself at Tunis. After his death his valuable letters from that
country to the _Télégraphe_ were published in a collected form by M. L.
Jezierski. In that dated the 18th October he first speaks of the result
of his inquiries on the sanitary question. “At Jerba,” he writes, “the
men are sleeping under small tents, and so are the sick. The heat has
often reached 58 degrees centigrade. At one time everything was
wanting;—water, medicines, provisions, and even tents. On the 20th June
a demand was made for tents; they arrived on the 10th September. Up to
that time the only shelter was esparto grass. The mortality was
terrible. On the 10th October the deaths had reached 73 out of 800, with
90 still on the sick list, and _no hospital or ambulance_.” Although an
order from the Minister of War prevented M. Le Faure from having any
further access to the hospitals, he had already gathered enough
statistics to enable him to bear out generally the assertions of M.
Lereboullet, and on the 7th November he delivered in the French Chambers
a speech in condemnation alike of the military and sanitary measures of
General Farre. A fortnight later he died of typhoid fever contracted
during his visits to the Tunis hospitals. His words, however, still
lived. Nobody any longer doubted that the formation of the Tunisian
expeditionary corps out of stray battalions had more or less
disorganised the whole French army, and that the sanitary arrangements
during the first six months of the war were as defective as they were
inadequate.
It was the accident of my bringing the news of poor Le Faure’s sad end
to Susa, which introduced me to my fellow-traveller Dr. Pozzi. Our
conversation naturally enough first turned on Susa. “Here,” said Dr.
Pozzi, “everything began with a sanitary blunder. The troops, instead of
being distributed in different convenient places, were huddled together
in the Kasbah, just as if the Arabs were going to assault the town. As
we were at peace with the Bey of Tunis, no building could be taken for
an hospital except an old grain store under the city walls, surrounded
by the stagnant overflow of the neighbouring oil mills, and incapable of
being ventilated. At most it could only contain fifty beds. The soldiers
soon conceived a horror of this noisome den: they gave it the sobriquet
of the _dépôtoire_, and concealed their sickness to avoid going to it.
The crowding of 1200 men in the Kasbah soon _engendered_ typhoid fever;
the _dépôtoire_ perpetuated it. Beds, dressers, &c., were wanting, but
in a short time there were eighty sick soldiers in the grain store, and
the cooking and medicine compounding had to go on in the midst of them.
Later this was remedied, but the evil was already done.” Twelve deaths
had taken place in a fortnight. From Susa Dr. Pozzi went on to speak of
the question generally. In his opinion the excessive mortality amongst
the French soldiers in Tunis has several distinct and palpable causes,
viz., defect of transport, want of preparation owing to M. Saint-
Hilaire’s first fiction of a military promenade, inability to obtain
hospital accommodation on account of M. Saint-Hilaire’s second fiction
of a Tunisian alliance, obstinate refusal to accept any Red Cross aid,
and the almost total absence of villages and isolated houses for the use
of the ambulance in the interior. “The large number of deaths at the
Manouba hospital,” observed Dr. Pozzi, “are to be accounted for by its
being selected as one of the principal places for the receipt of the
sick from the interior, and by the means used to transport them thither.
Many died _en route_ from the effects of travelling under a burning sun
in an uncovered springless Maltese cart. It often happened that the
patients were tied together to prevent them falling out, and a doctor
told me that he had on one occasion _cut a living soldier from a
companion who had been dead several hours_.” Dr. Pozzi considers Bizerta
as an instance of the places in which typhoid fever was engendered by
defective provisions, crowding, overfatigue, and too great weight of
baggage. He thinks that the sanitary administration of the campaign
falls into three epochs—April to August, inexcusably bad; September to
November, improving; from November, good. Jerba, Gabes, and Fernána are,
according to him, the scenes of the most fatal mistakes. As regards the
first two localities, Dr. Pozzi’s information exactly confirms the
details given by MM. Lereboullet and Le Faure. “Fernána,” he says, “was
originally occupied in May, owing to a mistaken notion of its strategic
importance. The camp was pitched on a long mound surmounted by a ruined
_kouba_, and having a slight depression generally filled with water on
its summit. The whole neighbourhood turned out to be insufferably damp,
and typhoid fever soon broke out there. Nearly all the garrison passed
through the ambulance, death after death occurred, but, in spite of
General Japy’s adverse report, the post was obstinately maintained.” I
afterwards met the medical officer in charge of Fernána, and obtained
from him some valuable information, which I shall allude to further on.
Dr. Pozzi thinks the calamities at Gabes admit of no excuse. The effects
of the unwholesome water could have been obviated by the use of
_appareils de distillation_, of which a warehouseful existed at Goletta
but were forgotten. The water, as drunk by the soldiers, was nothing
more or less than a purgative, and produced dysentery as a matter of
course. Typhoid infection originally came to Goletta through the
Perpignan battalion, and was fostered by the insufficient accommodation
of the first military hospital in the old Tunisian arsenal. Here many
deaths occurred before either beds or bedding were provided, the
patients dying in their ordinary clothes, and under circumstances too
painful to relate. It was not until the 16th August that the Kheir-ed-
Din Palace could be obtained for the ambulance.
Dr. Pozzi was the accredited representative of the Society for the
Relief of Wounded Soldiers, of which the Duc de Nemours is President.
From the very first the Society pressed its offers of assistance on the
military authorities at Tunis and in France. It received a stereotyped
answer, “We will apply to you for what we require.” Nothing was ever
asked for, all other considerations being apparently sacrificed to false
_amour propre_. The Society proposed to send a supply of flannel belts
to Tunis. General Farre replied that every soldier had one, and declined
the offer. The necessity for these belts in Africa is a matter of
notoriety, but it was only after considerable delay that they were
supplied to the infantry. Here red-tapeism came into play, and fresh
demands and discussion were required before the cavalry could obtain
them. In the early days of December the wants of the artillery,
engineers, and other corps _were still under consideration_. General
Japy at last allowed Dr. Pozzi to distribute 300 cholera belts _sub
rosâ_ amongst the artillerymen at Tunis.
Dr. Pozzi now fondly hoped that everything was now going on well. Hardly
a fortnight after we had parted at Tripoli a remarkable letter was
written by Surgeon-Major Bailli from the Carthage or Kheir-ed-Din Palace
Hospital to a friend at Paris:—
_Hospital, Carthage, December 13._—I should have written to you sooner
had I not fallen ill, being confined to bed, and generally weak. . . .
It verily pains me to see what goes on every day in this hospital, which
I selected for special observations. In the first place, the services,
medical, pharmaceutical, and administrative, are perfectly independent
of each other. The duties of the medical men are, of course, confined to
writing prescriptions for food and drugs, and the druggists execute the
orders as to the latter without the chief of the medical staff having
the slightest wish to say a word to them. The administrative officer is
the supreme manager of the nurses, and also supplies the provisions and
superintends the _materiel_ and distribution of food. Something may be
contrary to the interests of the patients; the food may be badly cooked,
the hours of the meals irregular; through negligence or incompetency,
the steward may have omitted to make certain purchases prescribed by the
doctor and indispensable to some patient; the attendants may neglect or
not perform different little duties often of immense importance in
particular circumstances; yet the doctor cannot make a reflection on the
steward. This official is perfectly independent; he is generally a man
of limited experience and education, who had hitherto been a petty
military officer, as in the case of our large hospitals, and only enjoys
the rank of captain, whereas the chief doctor is assimilated to that of
colonel. The doctor’s only recourse, when the service is perfectly
intolerable, is to the commissariat officer, who is placed above all
three services. Here, at Carthage, as it happens, the administrative
service is conducted in a deplorable manner. The attendants shamefully
neglect their duties. Patients often remain for a whole day without
receiving their medicine; they are often made to swallow it all at once.
A convalescent from typhoid fever procured, nobody knows how,
supplementary victuals, which he concealed under his mattress, and died
of indigestion. Another needed help to move from his bed; the attendant
was away; he was obliged to go alone; he fell, and I found him lying on
the sand, for most of the patients are under tents, without boards or
mats, a point to which I shall revert. “Can the service in time of war
be as good as in time of peace?” is the attendant’s reply to a
remonstrance. At what a war; and at Carthage, too! The chief medical man
complains, let us say to the commissariat officer. If the latter says
anything to the steward, which does not necessarily follow, the latter
is furious, and thenceforth he is at daggers drawn with the chief
doctor. All the attendants of course side with the steward, as they are
involved in the blame. Every opportunity is taken of giving annoyance to
the doctor, and in the end the sufferer again is the unfortunate
patient, whom the attendants, stewards, and commissariat officer all
come to regard as a costly incumbrance, the source of all their trouble
and _ennui_. The steward is closely interested in the economy of his
management. The cheaper it is the higher is his premium, and the better
note he gets from his superior, the commissariat officer, as being a
careful manager of the public money. The regulations say “Best quality;”
but he replies there was none, and he had to buy what he could.
Sometimes there are neither eggs nor poultry in the market, so beef and
haricot-beans are given to the patients. The economy is great, the
premium substantial, the note of the superior good. You will say, why
not get the food from Marseilles, whence there are three packets a week?
But this would involve greater labour and expense, hence less premium.
And as for cleanliness, which is also the business of the steward, the
cesspools for the last four days have been running over (a pipe is said
to be clogged), and if anything is necessary in an hospital filled with
patients suffering from typhoid fever, dysentery, or diphtheria, it is
the immediate repairing of such accidents. Another point of importance
is the insufficient number of the medical staff. While the number of the
regiments has been increased, and proportionally also the commissariat,
our ranks have remained the same as before 1870, whence arises overwork
for us at the expense, as usual, of the patients. At the commencement of
the wet season the hospital had been five months in existence, and the
greater part of the patients were still under great single canvas tents,
eighteen to a tent, and packed so close together that you could scarcely
pass between them. When there was heavy rain the water dripped through
the canvas at different spots, and the patients often woke up quite wet.
The weather was very tempestuous, and the wind blew through the frail
tents erected on the fine sand of the shore. An insufficient supply of
necessaries obliged many to go outside in wind and rain, and there were
no sandals or slippers to protect their feet from the wet sand. There
was a simple preventive for all this—viz., the erection of wooden sheds.
They were demanded by the chief doctor from the first, and required at
the latest to be ready for the wet season. They are not yet ready. They
were begun in October, then already late. Thus, the patients are still
under tents which for months have not been changed or turned and are
literally infected, thereby, of course, considerably augmenting the
mortality. The wet season will probably be finished before these sheds
are ready. Things would evidently be very different if the doctors, who,
of course, have an interest and pride in the condition of their
patients, had the management of the service of the hospitals. When one
asks why things are organised as they are, one is positively amazed and
shocked at the power of routine, and at the depth of the public
indifference to the fate of the poor young French soldiers who happen to
fall wounded or ill and who always and everywhere—in the Crimea, in
Italy, in Mexico, in Tunis—are in an enormous and revolting proportion,
sometimes ten times as great as necessity warrants, and always superior
to that of other European soldiers. The English, in recognition of the
services rendered by the sanitary corps in the Ashantee Expedition, have
called it the doctors’ war. I will not pronounce the name ours deserves.
Another fact that has passed under my eyes was this—a fortnight ago 70
of our patients were ordered to be conveyed to the province of
Constantine by a packet, the hour of departure of which was fixed. They
were taken in carriages to Goletta to embark. Not a sign was there of
the boat, which arrived the next day. Only the commissariat and the
stewards could neglect so simple a precaution as to wait till the boat
was announced before ordering the patients to be conveyed from the
hospital. If such is the hospital at Carthage, 36 hours’ voyage from
Marseilles, what must be the ambulances in the interior? The bulletins
of the commissariat report that the hospital at Carthage is provided
with everything, and is the most admirably conducted hospital in Tunis.
To this follows a postscript in which the writer reverts to the subject
of the infection of the hospital at Carthage. The poison does not come
from without, but is fabricated in the tents themselves, which are
constantly full. The Kheir-ed-Din Palace holds scarcely 100 patients,
and is already too full. There is no interval between the departure of
the convalescent and the entry of the new patient, who takes his place
after a change of sheets in the still warm bed. The result is that the
place after four months’ use has become a perfect sink of infection.
Diphtheria has become settled in it, and the only remedy is an immediate
removal by steamers of all the patients not suffering from that disease,
and able to be transported to France or Algeria. The letter concludes as
follows:—
Last night a terrible tempest destroyed four large tents. You can
imagine the scene, the broken poles falling on the beds, the canvas
rent, the rain pouring upon the unhappy patients, and the bugle
summoning the attendants to carry the poor fellows into the unfinished
sheds.
A few days after the publication of this remarkable letter I happened to
travel to Marseilles in an hospital ship. The military authorities had
chartered the passenger steamer “Martinique” to convey a number of
convalescent soldiers to France, and on these subjects their will is
law. With one or two exceptions my fellow-passengers were all doctors,
some of them in charge of the patients, others going to recruit
themselves. The day before we left Goletta, Dr. Bailli had been called
to account for the publication of his letter, and sentenced to thirty
days’ arrest as a preparatory step to being placed in _non activité_.
The talk on board was chiefly of sanitary grievances and Dr. Bailli.
More army doctors came on board at La Calle and Bone. Their conversation
was still of hospitals and Dr. Bailli. Everybody endorsed his views,
regretted his fate, and admired his courage. My next-door neighbour at
table was one of the few real heroes of the last Punic War. Dr. Veillon
had seen all the Khamír campaign, and for several months had been in
charge of the pestilential camp at Fernána. Worn almost to a shadow with
anxiety and fatigue, himself stricken and debilitated with fever, he was
going back to his home in France with a hopelessly shattered
constitution and a recommendation for the Cross of the Legion of Honour.
He told me the same sad story of Fernána as I had previously heard from
Dr. Pozzi. “I joined the Fernána camp in June,” said Dr. Veillon; “it
was on the borders of a marsh. I had no chemist to assist me. Typhoid
fever almost immediately appeared, and from first to last we lost ten
per cent. of our garrison. As far as I know not a single individual
escaped without attack. Till October the soldiers died dressed and lying
on rugs on the ground: then we got beds and bedding. For a time I was
forced to perform my duties while disabled by fever myself. Thank God,”
he added, visibly shuddering as if at some disagreeable memory of past
horrors, “that terrible camp has at last been broken up.”
There is one subject upon which all the army surgeons I have met are
particularly bitter. In the midst of all this death and misery, the
military chaplains received a gratuity of five francs, in addition to
their salary, for each decease. I can to some extent sympathise with the
indignation of the doctors.
· · · · · · · · · ·
I have now told as shortly as possible the story of the French soldiers’
_morts pour la patrie_ during the war in Tunis. Far be it from me, while
blaming the authors of the expedition, to detract in the smallest degree
from the glory of these young conscripts, many of whom died without a
murmur in their country’s service. The admirable patience generally
displayed by the French troops amidst these trials and difficulties is
beyond all praise. Once I was astonished at Medjez to see the walls of
the station covered with the legend _Vive la France, à bas le Général
Farre_. In the presence of the narratives of Drs. Lereboullet, Pozzi,
and Bailli, I am surprised no longer. Impeachment is out of fashion and
favour, but posterity in France and elsewhere will judge both General
Farre and his colleague _au Ministère des Affaires Etrangères_.