up to its walls. Of the lower district of
Smyrna, near the shore, a considerable part
is built on piles over swamp, sewer, and
banks composed of the town-filth. The
narrow streets between such houses,
especially those covered in from air and light to
form bazaars thick with stench, are almost
impassable for Europeans. They are not
drained, paved, or cleaned in any rational
and human sense. That there should ever
be a house in them free from fever or
the plague, is wonderful. A part of the
directions given for protection of health in
the hospital at Smyrna, was the daily cleansing
of these streets, wherever they approached
too near the building. There were foul open
ditches, also, to fill up, choked drains to
open, clear, and purify. Thorough ventilation
was established, the unhealthy basement
story was abandoned, water was
filtered, walls were lime-washed, and the
usual recommendation was made, of an allowance
of a thousand cubic feet of air to every
patient.

The sanitary works in and about these
hospitals began on the seventeenth of March.
During the three weeks previous to that
date, the proportion of deaths among the sick
in the Barrack, General, Palace, and Kulali
Hospitals had been nearly ten in every
hundred. During the three weeks next
following the commencement of the improved
arrangements the mortality fell to exactly
one-half of what it had been. During
the next three weeks of sanitary discipline,
the proportion of deaths among the
sick fell again from nearly five to three
per cent. During the three next weeks the
proportion, fell below two per cent. Finally,
during the three last weeks of June, there
died of the sick, in these hospitals, one in a
hundred, only.

At the end of June, cholera — which had
prevailed in the Crimea and at some points
on the Bosphorus, and which had touched
the hospitals wherever a defective drain
had been left — broke out in the rooms
occupied by the dépôt of soldiers at the
Barrack Hospital. The rooms in which it made
itself at home were not clean: they were
crowded, and the ventilation was inadequate.
The Sanitary Commissioners had
urged the removal of the dépôt. Cholera
came among the soldiers. ln four days there
were fourteen cases and nine deaths.
The dépôt was removed, and the epidemic
vanished.

The hospital at Abydos was unserviceable.
The Civil Hospital at Renkioi, fitted up
under the energetic superintendence of Dr.
Parkes, was perfect in every detail, and would
have been of inestimable value had the war
lasted another year.

Now, we come to the Crimea, where the
climate is indeed capricious, and the soil has,
in some districts, the unwholesome influences
common to uncultivated land; but where, on the
whole, nothing more is needed than reasonable
and moderate precaution to secure
capital health. Hot sunshine fell sometimes
during the day, our soldiers said, like melted
lead upon their backs; but, when they turned
out at night the chill struck to their marrow.
Given, however, proper heed to food, dwelling,
and dress, there is much to thrive
upon and little to die of, in the air of the
Crimea.

The Allies occupied ground in which good
springs abounded, yielding clear and wholesome
water, with the single fault of being
hard. The Sanitary Commissioners found that
very simple engineering devices, which would
have made the water-supply large and pure,
had not been used by the army on its own
behalf. Large open tanks were being cleared
out on loamy or clayey ground. The soldiers did
not draw water from service-pipes, but dipped
with canteens or buckets into tanks, which
they made muddy, and round about which
they slopped and trod the unpaved ground
into mire that yielded runlets of dirt to the
well.

Down the upper part of the valley of
Balaklava, flowed a valuable stream. It was
fouled near its source by Turks and French;
lower down, dead animals were thrown into it,
and, for want of care, it became unfit for use.
Again, there were springs at Balaklava, yielding
a large stream of pure water, that ran towards
a ravine under the castle-rock. This stream
was polluted by washing from the ships, and
even by worse nuisances. The Commissioners
advised that it should be covered over, or at
any rate protected by guards from pollution.
Again, in watering horses throughout the
whole camp — easy as it would have been to
supply each trough by pipes coming direct
from the well—the plan was to pass the
overflowings of the first trough into the second,
the overflow from that into the third, and so
forth, the water thus becoming more and
more polluted, until at last it was so filthy that
the horses would not drink it. At Balaklava,
(where Nature had been most bountiful of
springs), the cattle landed from the transports,
after having been kept several days
without water during the voyage from the
ports of the Black Sea, even in the hottest
weather, found nothing to drink. They
were driven on to the dépôts without water;
although a few yards of piping — of which there
was plenty in the place — laid from the
stream in the castle ravine to a few troughs
on the cattle-wharf, would have
permanently supplied the want. This defect
was pointed out by the Sanitary
Commissioners, and after a delay of some months,
was at last remedied by the commissariat
works corps.

The sanitary condition of the British troops
in the Crimea was, in the beginning of April
eighteen hundred and fifty-five, by no means
good, although hardly below what has in
all former times been considered a fair