[22]
AMERICAN ARMY, 1812 TO 1814.
We need not go abroad to find proofs of the waste of life in military
camps. Our own army, in the war with Great Britain in 1812-14, suffered,
as the European armies have done, by sickness and death, far beyond men
in civil occupations. There are no comprehensive reports, published by
the Government, of the sanitary condition and history of the army on the
Northern frontier during that war. But the partial and fragmentary
statements of Dr. Mann, in his "Medical Sketches," and the occasional
and apparently incidental allusions to the diseases and deaths by the
commanding officers, in their letters and despatches to the Secretary of
War, show that sickness was sometimes fearfully prevalent and fatal
among our soldiers. Dr. Mann says: "One regiment on the frontier, at one
time, counted 900 strong, but was reduced, by a total want of a good
police, to less than 200 fit for duty." "At one period more than 340
were in the hospitals, and, in addition to this, a large number were
reported sick in camp."[23] "The aggregate of the army at Fort George
and its dependencies was about 5,000. From an estimate of the number
sick in the general and regimental hospitals, it was my persuasion that
but little more than half of the army was capable of duty, at one
period, during the summer months"[24] of 1813.
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