XI.

An eminent statistician has stated that mortality is in direct ratio to the density of population, and that superficial area is as essential to health as cubic space. To the writer's mind, the overcrowding of the men, and their exposure to the variations of heat and cold, the influence of moisture, and the foul emanations of the infected soil, were sufficient to cause great destruction of human life; and when combined with the deficient dietary, the imagination can hardly conceive of a better field for disease and death than the condition of this swarming pen. All the elements and combinations of physical destructiveness were here in full play. "Losses by battle," says Sir Charles Napier, "sink to nothing, compared with those inflicted by improperly constructed barracks, and the jamming of soldiers--no other word is sufficiently expressive." "Diseases," states the French Inspector Baudens, "slay more men than steel or powder, and it is often easy to prevent them by a few simple hygienic precautions."

In all campaigns where the care of the soldier is left to the military man,--who is educated for destruction, and has not been taught in the economy of life,--we see in the mortuary and non-efficient lists a disgraceful and culpable array of thoughtless routine, vulgar prejudices, and systems. In our Military Academies the elements and the means of destruction are taught, but not a law unfolded that relates to the principles of health, strength, and life. To alleviate the burden of the military list by sanitary measures is an idea unheard of, or at least unnoticed. "For these works," writes Chadwick, in his papers on "Economy," "a special training is needed for our military engineers, whose present peculiar training is only for old works for war, and for those imperfectly,--works for the maintenance of the health of an army being necessary means to the maintenance of its military strength.

"The one-sided character of the common training of our military engineers was displayed in the Crimea, in the proved need of a sanitary commission to give instruction for the selection and the practical drainage of proper sites for healthy encampments, for the choice collection and the proper distribution of wholesome water, for the construction of wholesome huts, and the proper shelter and treatment of horses as well as men."