The deportment of British
officers in the Seven Years War no doubt had some part in hastening on
the Revolution.
What with levelling Montcalm's siege works, planting palisades, and
grubbing up stumps in their bungling and laborious way, the regulars
found abundant occupation. Discipline was stiff and peremptory. The
wooden horse and the whipping-post were conspicuous objects in the camp,
and often in use. Caleb Rea, being tender-hearted, never went to see the
lash laid on; for, as he quaintly observes, "the cries were satisfactory
to me, without the sight of the strokes." He and the rest of the doctors
found active exercise for such skill as they had, since fever and
dysentery were making scarcely less havoc than the bullets at
Ticonderoga. This came from the bad state of the camps and unwholesome
food. The provincial surgeons seem to have been very little impressed
with the importance of sanitary regulations, and to have thought it
their business not to prevent disease, but only to cure it. The one
grand essential in their eyes was a well-stocked medicine-chest, rich in
exhaustless stores of rhubarb, ipecacuanha, and calomel. Even this
sometimes failed. Colonel Williams reports "the sick destitute of
everything proper for them; medicine-chest empty; nothing but their
dirty blankets for beds; Dr. Ashley dead, Dr. Wright gone home, low
enough; Bille worn off his legs,--such is our case.
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