needed at least two hundred and ninety-
three men, with tools and means of transport.
This estimate was sent to head-quarters, and
a number of men was granted, averaging
twenty-five a-day. Warm weather drew
nearer. Cholera was expected. At the
beginning of May, five hundred men were
needed. Eighty were spared ; and, at the
beginning of June, that number was raised
to a hundred and fifty-five, — these being
native labourers, of whom about six do the
day's work of an Englishman. There were
no men to be spared to cleansing operations:
they could so much better be given, to
disease and death. The large exhaling
surface of the marsh never was covered, for want
of labour ; neither was the Turkish burial
ground, on the west side of the harbour.
They continued to generate malaria throughout
the summer. Meanwhile, to the utmost
of their skill, and to the utmost strength of
the force granted them, the Commissioners
worked for the removal of the causes of
disease. Cholera came, and they battled
vigorously with it.

In camp, there were ill-ventilated tents
and huts, constructed with a singular neglect
of all the rules of health, — deliberately sunk
below the level of damp, undrained soil, and
unprovided, often, with the very simplest
means of ventilation. In some, there were
but a hundred and fifty cubic feet of air
allowed at night to every sleeper. The usual
allowance was only about three hundred
cubic feet. The camp of the Seventy-ninth
Highlanders, on Marine Heights, furnished
a strong illustration of the influence
exercised by the position of huts upon their
tenants. None of the huts were wholesome;
but one batch of them, planted for special
military reasons on soft and wet ground, a
hundred feet below the rest, were noticeably
fatal to the men who occupied them. After
the Seventy-ninth had left, the Thirty-first
Regiment arrived at Balaklava, lived in the
same camp, and was smitten with disease
most fatally in those same lower huts. The
company removed higher up, and the disease
abated. Four companies of the Royal Artillery
then disembarked at Balaklava, and were
marched into the old huts of the Seventy-
ninth. Death took possession again of his
own ground in the hollow: and at last the
medical officer ordered all the affected huts,
namely, the twelve built on ground below
the rest, to be pulled down. They were
rebuilt higher up, and then became
comparatively healthy.

In the camp, on the plateau before Sebastopol,
while there was on the whole a great
neglect of matters upon which health most
immediately depends, there was much
difference, as to their sanitary state, between
different divisions of the force—proportioned,
in fact, to the characters of the medical and
military officers who had in each the power
to enforce good regulations. There were
some portions of the camp in which it would
have been most difficult to find a fault.

We need not dwell upon the numerous
shortcomings to which the Commissioners
upon their first arrival in camp called attention.
The right work was done. The surface
of the ground was cleansed; the huts
and hospitals were drained and ventilated;
slaughtering places ceased to be nuisances;
room was made for the sun, rain, and wind
to purify the soil. In the meantime over-
work ceased, food became abundant, and at
last our hospitals were almost empty, and
there were few nuisances to report, except
those suffered by men stationed in the
neighbourhood of a French slaughter-house,
or otherwise reminded of the filthy state of
our allies. In one week of April before the
evacuation of the Crimea, there were only
five deaths among the seventy-two thousand
men in position there, and twenty-two
in all the hospital establishments,—namely,
at the front, Kertch, Scutari, Renkioi, and
Smyrna.

Now, let us turn, for a few minutes to the
French camp. A peculiarity about the
ambulance service of the French is, that it
deprives the military surgeon of one-half
the freedom of action on behalf of the sick
which he enjoys in England. The French
regimental surgeon, although of advanced
rank, treats only slight cases, and sends all
that require more than about two days attention
to the hôpital ambulant, which, by the
rules of the French service, should be able
to provide for one sixth part of an army
warring on a foreign soil. In this hospital
medical duties are performed under the
direction of the war-minister, who delegates
his authority either to the commander-in-
chief, or the officers of the Intendance. The
Intendance is a board unknown to the
English, and is composed of officers of every
grade, permanently withdrawn from
regimental duties and promotion, and charged
with the administrative direction of garrison
and field hospital services. The Intendance
commands the medical staff in all matters of
military discipline and police; it fixes the
number of beds and the amount of furniture
to be contained in any ward; it contracts
for all hospital requirements, and is alone
answerable for their supply; it regulates
the dietary on a scale which no surgeon may
transgress in any one particular, save at
his own personal cost. It appoints and
removes surgeons. It establishes, in fact, a
board, with all its apparatus of files, dockets,
and red tape, not only between the army
surgeon and what an English doctor would
regard as the military position due to him,
but also to a very great extent between the
army surgeon and his patients. Unless we
are to believe more evil of French surgeons
than we know to be due to a body of men,
very competent and enlightened, we must
say that with the French army in the Crimea