standard of health for armies in the field.
The sick and wounded were an eighth part
of the entire force, and, to every five men,
incapacitated by their wounds, there were
ninety-five laid up by sickness. During the
next five weeks the sick were a tenth part,
and the wounded only a hundredth part of the
army. Half the sickness was made up of
fevers. Three cases in five were of those
diseases which are induced by unwholesome
ways of life. In the week ending the
twelfth of May, cholera increased in the
camp; forty cases of it went into hospital,
and half of them were fatal cases. During
that one week the admissions into hospital
were thirty-seven in a thousand of the force,
of which only about five were due to wounds.
During that week the mortality was great,
and four deaths in every five were deaths by
preventible disease. In the week ending on
the ninth of June, there were one hundred
and forty-five deaths from cholera. The
week ending on the twenty-third of June
contained one of the bloodiest struggles of
the whole war, — the attack on the Redan.
Sixteen or seventeen hundred wounded men
went into hospital; but, there went into
hospital during the same week nineteen
hundred cases of preventible disease. Her own
unwholesome camp was a more devastating
enemy to Britain than the Russian with his
fortress and his batteries. Thirty in a
hundred of the deaths in hospital, that week, were
deaths from wounds; the proportion of
deaths from preventible disease was more
than twice as great.

The ten weeks ending in the middle of
July include the first advance of spring and
the setting in of the fierce summer heat.
They include the beginning and the first
decline of cholera. They include a period of
harassing and dangerous trench-duty. They
include one terrible assault. During those
weeks three men in five of the whole British
force went into hospital. Of those admitted,
seventeen in each hundred went in because
of wounds: only twenty deaths in each
hundred were produced by wounds. All the
rest was disease, and of every ten men killed
by a disease, nine were killed by a zymotic
disease,—that is to say, by a disease that
might have been prevented. The more
obvious privations of the winter were
abated; men were better clad and better
fed; fresh meat, vegetables, and bread had
found their way to camp. Nevertheless,
zymotic, or preventible maladies were
increasing; the men who suffered most, being
the new arrivals. There was an epidemic
influence abroad. In the camp were damp,
filth, and foul air : therefore the epidemic
influence was irresistible.

At Balaklava the "more men from
England" suffered most. The harbour being
nearly landlocked in a tideless sea, there was
dependence only upon winds and currents
for renewal of the water. It had formerly
extended farther inland ; and, at its head,
the portion filled up had become a noisome
marsh. The native houses in the little town
calculated for the unwholesome lodgment of
five or six hundred people, were damp, and
bred fever. Then this harbour became filled
with shipping : and, from the ships, all offal
and filth went to pollute the stagnant water.
The town became crowded with people.
Twenty or five-and-twenty thousand men
and a large number of animals, came into it
and left it every day on the service of the
army. For all this increase of population
and traffic, there were no adequate cleansing
or other sanitary measure. There was no road
past the cliffs leading out to sea : nobody had
thought of carrying away the filth in barges.
All went to pollute the harbour water and the
harbour shores. The Commissioners found
that nearly the whole of the eastern margin
of the harbour—the part nearest the town,
and directly under the sterns of the shipping,
where men were at work unloading stores
for the army was composed of a mass of
organic matter, consisting of filth, stable
manure, offal and numerous carcases of dead
animals. When Orientals are thus filthy,
they get some of the required scavenging
done for them by the troops of dogs in every
town. At Balaklava all dogs had been
summarily destroyed.

Disease and mortality increased. It was
most clearly traceable to the foul state of the
place. Epidemics broke out in those ships
that were moored where the air was most
pernicious, and they were arrested suddenly by
sending such ships out into the open sea. The
town became so pestilential, that it was not
safe for men to pass even a few hours in it
while on duty. The great winter mortality of
eighteen hundred and fifty-four, and eighteen
hundred and fifty-five, led to the use of the
marsh as a place of burial. A large number
of men were put there, close to the line of
public road; were laid almost in water, and
were so sparingly covered with earth, that when
the Sanitary Commissioners first examined the
place, portions of the clothing of the dead,
and even limbs, protruded above ground.
When these graves afterwards were being
covered with peat charcoal and sand by the
men yielded to the service of the Sanitary
Commission, wine and stimulants had to be
administered to them hourly.

Colonel Harding and Admiral Boxer had
greatly exerted themselves to make Balaklava
wholesomer; but failed for want of men. The
Sanitary Commissioners never obtained the
working bodies necessary for the perfect
maintenance of wholesomeness. Want of
labourers was still the difficulty, till the
Army Works' Corps landed. They set to
work, however, on the business of cleansing.
Simply to maintain wholesomeness, when
once established, would require the daily
industry of seventy-five men. Fairly to be
prepared against the advent of warm weather