April 2, 1894.] 



KNOWLEDGE 



81 



correspondence given by steam power, and the marvellous 

 intelligence of the daily press, the most intimate life (so to 

 speak) of the Crimean army was laid open to the English 

 public from the time of its leaving these shores to the time 



of its return The forces had barely landed on a 



foreign soil, when an uneasy consciousness that all was not 



as it should be began to possess the public mind The 



suspicion grew wit'' the progress of the war, gaining 

 strength from uiie e\'ents at Varna, and on the beach near 

 Eupatoria, the night after the descent upon the Crimea. 

 The horrible deadlock at Scutari quickly followed, and 

 doubt was at an end. With amazed indignation the 

 British people saw an utter absence of organization in the 

 general hospitals, lepartment clashing with department in 

 hopeless confusioL, and official routine setting at nought 

 the dearest interests of the soldier and honour of the 

 country. It witnessed the wounded of Alma, of Balaclava, 

 and of Inkerman, and the rapidly increasing sick from the 

 camp before Sebastopol, crowded together without order 

 or decency, and wanting even the sheerest necessaries 

 amidst an apparent profusion of stores, and within cannon- 

 shot of a great city. It witnessed these gallant men rotting 

 away amidst revolting filth and neglect; the vast buildings 

 in which they were housed converted into foul pest-houses ; 

 the medical staff helpless amidst the trammels of sense- 

 less regulations ; and the military authorities deaf to 

 remonstrance, and placidly replj'ing to all protests that 

 they had no official information of the state of things being 

 such as the public press represented it to be. 



" Then the indignation of the people broke forth. It 

 intervened, with a force which could not be said nay to, 

 between the sick and wounded and the authorities. From 

 its abundance th.^ nation poured out whatever was needed 

 to give its mail led and helpless soldiers ease, comfort, 

 and the hope of life." The Tiiiws organized this spontaneous 

 outbreak of public feeling ; and Florence Nightingale 

 appeared upon the scene, and " dispelled the hideous gloom 

 which had gathered around the sick and wounded at 

 Scutari, and extended its shadow to every hearth in the 

 kingdom." 



To Miss Nightingale's book, " Notes on Hospitals," we 

 owe scarcely less than to her heroic work at Scutari ; but 

 even she could have eftected little but for the noble ad- 

 ministrative work of Sidney Herbert. The reports of the 

 Barrack and Hosj)ital Improvement Commissioners — of 

 whom Captain Douglas Galton is still with us as an 

 active labi nrer — laid down priucipleg which must remain 

 true for all time, and which have been of incalculable 

 benefit to -ivilians no less than to military men in many 

 countries '• sides our own. It is probably no exaggeration 

 to say th no barrack, workhouse, hospital, infirmary, 

 asylum, o even large school has been erected in the last 

 thirty years that is not indebted in a greater or less 

 degree to the reports of that Commission. 



In those days the duties of the army medical officers 

 were officially confined to the treatment of the sick and 

 wounded ; as regarded preventive measures they were 

 helpless. Before our troops sailed from England, and 

 again in the early autumn in the Crimea, warnings were 

 littered by the chief medical officers, who were well versed 

 in the medical histories of earlier campaigns, but they 

 were curtly ordered to mind their own business. Now-a- 

 days the main duty of the army surgeon is held to be the 

 preseriation of the health of the troops committed to his 

 charge, and the Professor of Jlilitary Hygiene is not the 

 least important teacher in the Army Medical School at 

 Netlc , English generals, now-a-days, constantly consult 

 their principal medical officers, with the best results for 

 all under their command. 



When the pitiless Russian winter fell upon our troops 

 it found them clothed in summer garments, with no better 

 shelter than their bell-tents, in which the men huddled 

 together for warmth. Crowding engendered typhus ; the 

 personal uncleanliness, scarcely avoidable under the cir- 

 cumstances, brought forth vermin. The lack of vegetables 

 and delay in serving out lime-juice caused an outbreak of 

 scurvy, and the scurvy-stricken soldiers, with spongy and 

 bleeding gums, could scarcely gnaw the hard biscuit, their 

 only bread. There were no definite sanitary regulations, 

 and matters were aggravated by the men being exhausted 

 by work in the trenches, so that we are told that the 

 camps became " diffused cesspools " ; naturally dysentery, 

 camp-diarrhsea, and enteric fever were added to th^ other 

 plagues. 



The cup of misery was filled to the brim before the 

 Royal Commissioners arrived upon the scene. The results 

 which followed the adoption of their recommendations 

 were startling in the extreme. " The hospitals were 

 quickly reduced to order and efficiency, and the health of 

 the men speedily rallied. From month to month the 

 physical vigour of the troops improved, notwithstanding 

 the harassing duties of the siege, and the evil sanitary 

 condition in which, at the best, they were too frequently 

 of necessity placed ; and before the end of the war the 

 remarkable spectacle was presented of an army maintaining 

 a higher degree of health in the field, in presence of the 

 enemy, than when comfortably housed in barracks at home 

 during peace.' 



But who were the Commissioners ? and what were their 

 methods ? They were Robert Rawlinson and Drs. Hector 

 Gavin, John Sutherland and Ga\-in Milroy. They came 

 fresh from the sanitary organization of England, under 

 the first Public Health Act (of 18-18), and they simply 

 found a state of affairs practically indistinguishable from 

 that prevailing in the slums of London, Liverpool, Leeds, 

 and Glasgow, crowded as they had been by fugitives from 

 the Irish famine of 1847. " There was the like privation, 

 with the like results; the like unutterable filth, again with 

 the like results ; the hke close packing together of the 

 living, still with the like results ; the like squalidity of 

 person, clothing, and surroundings, again and again with 

 the like results " — typhus, scurvy, diarrhoea, vermin. 



" With the introduction of proper food, scurvy presently 

 ceased, and with the cleansing and better ordering of the 

 camps and hospitals, typhus, dysentery, and diarrhfea 

 practically vanished ; by the adoption, in fact, of the same 

 sort of sanitary measures which it was sought to make 

 common in our towns and villages at home, diseases which 

 were at that time and still, although happily to a less 

 extent, are the curse of our crowded communities, dis- 

 appeared fi-om the army, and the men reached the 

 remarkable pitch of health which I have already described. 

 And this result, it must be remembered, was brought 

 about with the troops occupying the same positions which 

 they had occupied since the beginning of the siege — 

 positions around which of necessity had been deposited 

 the accumulated filth of the occupation, and all the dead, 

 human and brute, for which a resting-place had to be 

 found." 



It was at that time the tradition of the Navy to allow 

 the naval surgeon more discretion in preventive measures, 

 and it is satisfactory to be told that the naval brigade 

 suffered much less than the soldiers ; it never got into so 

 deep a slough, and recovered it more rapidly when better 

 times came. 



But it will be asked. How about the French? Put very 

 shortly, this is what happened. At the commencement of 

 the operations the French troops settled down to camp 



