"The damp, unventilated, and undrained huts, in some parts of the camp,
produced consequences similar to those in cellar-dwellings at
home,"--that is, typhus and typhoid diseases. "The half-buried huts of
the Sardinian camp furnished a large proportion of fever cases among
their occupants," "That beautiful village of Balaklava was allowed to
become a hot-bed of pestilence, so that fever, dysentery, and cholera,
in it and its vicinity and on the ships in the harbor, were abundant."
"Filth, manure, offal, dead carcasses, had been allowed to accumulate to
such an extent, that we found, on our arrival, in March, 1855, it would
have required the labor of three hundred men to remove the local causes
of disease before the warm weather set in."[55] General Airey said: "The
French General Canrobert came to me, complaining of the condition in
which his men were. He said 'they were dying in the mud.'"[56]
Dr. Bryce, one of the army-surgeons in that war, says, in his book: "The
British army was exhausted by overwork and the deficiency of everything
that would sustain health and strength."
When the soldier, overcome by these morbific influences, became sick,
and was taken to the hospital, he was still compelled to suffer, and
often sank under, the privation of those comforts and means of
restoration which the sick at home usually enjoy.
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