making head, the cholera subsided, and soon
disappeared. In the Britannia, when she was
in the Black Sea, just before the sailing of the
expedition to the Crimea, within five days two
hundred and twenty-nine of a crew of nine
hundred and twenty were attacked with cholera,
and of these one hundred and thirty-nine died.
There were also four hundred cases of diarrhœa.
The ship had put to sea, to get rid of the disease
on its first showing itself, and the change seemed
to be beneficial until rough weather came, and the
lower deck ports had to be closed. Then, on the
following night, cholera broke out with all its
fury. As soon as the crew could be removed into
some empty transports, the scourge vanished,
after destroying twice as many men as were
killed in the whole fleet by the enemy's fire in
the attack on the sea batteries of Sebastopol.

There is need, in fact, to follow the lead of
Count Rumford and Sir Gilbert Blane in securing
for the sleepers between decks a system of
ventilation that no stress of weather can destroy.

During the three years under consideration
('fifty-six, 'seven, and 'eight), the deaths by
disease were two thousand one hundred and twenty-
five; to this we have to add the invaliding of
men discharged as permanently sick, and who
go to swell the tables of mortality ashore. In
the same years, four thousand two hundred and
twenty-one men were discharged as invalids, so
that the average loss to the fleet by sickness and
death was two thousand one hundred men a
year. It was least in 'fifty-six, and most in 'fifty-
eight, when it reached a number equal to that of
the combined crews of three of the largest line-
of-battle ships in the navy; the loss being, it is
to be remembered, among picked men of an age
when death does not come to them in the healthy
course of nature. At the same time it is to
be added that under the healthy conditions
which now prevail in ships of war on the home
station, or on stations where the mortality is
even less, the death-rate from all causes is only
two or three in a thousand greater than that
among the picked men of the London Fire
Brigade, and is not sensibly greater than that
for men of the same ages in all England.

In our home fleet, for example, there are but
eight or nine deaths in a year from fever. The
same men in their old homes ashore, would yield
more cases. The great fever station at home is
Sheerness and the estuary of the Medway, the
ships anchored high up the Medway generally
suffering more than those at Sheerness. The
people afloat and ashore, in ship and dockyard,
and in the town of Sheerness, suffer so much
from malaria, that in Chatham Hospital, Sheerness
is said to be spoken of as "the African
station of our home service." There is three or
four times as much fever in the Mediterranean
as in the home fleet. There, in the course of a
twelvemonth, about seventy men in a thousand
are attacked, and two in the seventy die. But the
West Indian station is the fever station, and of
half the annual deaths from fever in our service
yellow fever is the cause. Within the last
fifteen or twenty years, yellow fever seems to have
been more destructive to our sailors than even
in the old bad times of neglected hygiène.

The reason of this we may find in the fact
that all the vessels most severely smitten have
been steamers. The excessive heat on board
aggravates the defect of ventilation; there is
also liability in steamers to the accumulation of
offensive rubbish under the machinery: which
adds to the impurity of the hot air in the
between decks. A particular part of a ship is
thus sometimes marked for its deadliness. In
the cases of two ships, the Argus and Virago, it
was "about the after part of the lower deck
and in the fore part of the engine-room," the
mortality being greatest among the men berthed
near these parts; and in the Leopard, nearly all
the attacks occurred among the men living in
the steerage, where they had been more exposed
than the rest of the crew to "an offensive effluvium
which had for some time previously issued
from the hold and spirit-room." On examination,
much black mud, mixed with half-rotten
chips, which had been accumulating for a long
time, was found in the limbers. "The exhalations
from that part of the ship, the surgeon
believed, were the cause of the yellow fever, as the
malarious influences from the shore were the
cause of the cases of remitting fever."

Take the yellow fever crew out into airy quarters
ashore, and the disease is checked. It all
but vanished in the case of the Argus, after the
crew, sick and well, had been landed at
Bermuda. Yellow fever is, in fact, the typhus of
the West Indies, bred like typhus, and to be
met with the same measures of prevention. The
removal of a ship to a cooler latitude is a
remedial measure. But above all things, the
crew, either sick or well, must not be cribbed
or cabined between decks, without ample ventilation.
To bring the sick on deck under awnings,
or to send them ashore (they have gone to
lie and heal among the patients of the well-
ventilated Barbadoes Hospital, without spreading
infection in a single case), is to arrest the disease
pretty surely. Something is due, of course, to
other causes. It is hard to say why there was
no yellow fever on the Brazilian station until
twelve years ago, when it appeared for the first
time, and has since added much to the mortality
among our sailors on that coast.

Not less famous than the West Indian Islands
are for the favouring of fever, are the East Indian
and China stations for the breeding of cholera,
dysentery, and diarrhœa. Of not quite five
hundred deaths from dysentery and diarrhœa in
three years, four hundred and twenty-five
occurred on this station. Of one hundred and sixty
cholera cases, all, except only twenty-two,
occurred in these waters: usually between May
and November. Whatever may be the existing
cause, and that is open to discussion, it is certain
that among the predisposing causes few are more
sure than an over-crowded and ill-ventilated
space between decks for the hammocks of the
sailors.

But of all diseases fostered by want of
ventilation, those of the lungs are, as we set out