262 MARCHES DURING THE INDIAN MUTINY. 



delusive: the men did march, and fought, and con- 

 quered, against enormous numerical odds, in spite of it ;: 

 and throughout the numerous wars waged by Great 

 Britain under similar trying conditions, our medical 

 officers and our generals have often commented upon 

 this remarkable fact, that so long as the men were 

 daily on the march, and that the stimulant of the 

 excitement of active service in face of the enemy was 

 continued, the army seemed to be wonderfully preserved 

 from disease. During the Indian Mutiny, their hardi- 

 hood and feats of marching, performed in the hottest 

 weather, repeatedly excited the wonder and unwilling 

 admiration of the Sepoys, who had no idea that 

 European troops would have been able to undergo 

 such a strain in that season. This circumstance there- 

 fore baffled all their calculations : and yet the moment 

 that the necessity for active exertion came to an end, 

 reaction set in and the health of the Europeans began 

 to suffer. Severe outbreaks of disease are, in fact, very 

 apt to occur, whenever men remain stationary for any 

 length of time, during the hot weather; if they are kept in 

 fixed camps or cantonments, sickness is, as we have said, 

 almost sure to follow partly, because men's " morale " 

 suffers from inaction, and because the tedium of existence 

 often produces profound depression of spirits, as each day 

 comes round and seems longer, and hotter, and duller, 

 than the previous one; partly also from physical 

 causes : the liver, for instance, becomes inactive, through 

 want of exercise, the rest becomes broken at night, 

 and the man becomes generally out of sorts, active 

 and interesting work being the great agency of Nature 



sense an uprising of the people of India, but a military revolt confined 

 practically exclusively to the native army of Bengal. 



