[46] In the British hospitals in the Crimean War,
39 per cent. were cholera, dysentery, and diarrhoea, 19 per cent.
fevers, 1.2 per cent. scurvy, 8 per cent. diseases of the lungs, 8 per
cent. diseases of the skin, 3.3 per cent. rheumatism, 2.5 per cent.
diseases of the brain and nervous system, 1.4 per cent. frost-bite or
mortification produced by low vitality and chills, 13, or one in 12,000,
had sunstroke, 257 had the itch, and 68 per cent. of all were of the
zymotic class,[47] which are considered as principally due to privation,
exposure, and personal neglect. The deaths from these classes of causes
were in a somewhat similar proportion to the mortality from all stated
causes,--being 58 per cent. from cholera, dysentery, and diarrhoea, and
1 per cent. from all other disorders of the digestive organs, 19 per
cent. from fevers, 3.6 per cent. from diseases of the lungs, 1.3 per
cent. from rheumatism, 1.3 per cent. from diseases of the brain and
nervous system, and 79 per cent. from those of the zymotic class. The
same classes of disease, with a much larger proportion of typhoid,
pneumonia, prostrated and destroyed many in the American army in the War
of 1812.
In paper No. 40, p. 54, of the Sanitary Commission, is a report of the
diseases that occurred in forty-nine regiments, while under inspection
about forty days each, between July and October, 1861.
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