It depends on the character of the country whether quarters in towns and villages are best, or huts or tents. In Europe, town quarters are found particularly fatal; and the state of health of the inmates of tents and huts depends much on the structure and placing of either. Precisely the same kind of hut in the Crimea held a little company of men in perfect health, or a set of invalids, carried out one after another to their graves. Nay, the same hut bore these different characters, according to its position at the top of a slope, or half-way down, so as to collect under its floor the drainage from a spring. American soldiers, however, are hardly likely to be hutted, I suppose; so I need say no more than that in huts and tents alike it is indispensable to health that there should be air-holes,—large spaces, sheltered from rain,—in the highest part of the structure, whether the entrance below be open or closed. The sanitary officers no doubt have it in charge to see that every man has his due allowance of cubic feet of fresh air,—in other words, to take care that each tent or other apartment is well ventilated, and not crowded. The men's affair is to establish such rules among comrades as that no one shall stop up air-holes, or overcrowd the place with guests, or taint the air with unwholesome fumes. In the British army, bell-tents are not allowed at all as hospital tents. Active, healthy men may use them in their resting hours; but their condemnation as abodes for the sick shows how pressing is the duty of ventilating them for the use of the strongest and healthiest.
A sound and airy tent being provided, the next consideration is of bedding.
The surgeons of the British force were always on the lookout for straw and hay, after being informed at the outset that the men could not have bedding, though it was hoped there was enough for the hospitals. A few nights in the dust, among the old bones and rubbish of Gallipoli, and then in the Bulgarian marshes, showed that it would be better to bestow the bedding before the men went into hospital, and sheets of material were obtained for some of them to lie upon. A zealous surgeon pointed out to the proper officer that this bedding consisted in fact of double ticking, evidently intended as paillasses, to be stuffed with straw. The straw not being granted, he actually set to work to make hay; and, being well aided by the soldiers, he soon saw them sleeping on good mattresses. It was understood in England, and believed by the Government, that every soldier in camp had three blankets; and after a time, this came true: but in the interval, during the damp autumn and bitter winter, they had but one. Lying on wet ground, with one damp and dirty blanket over them, prepared hundreds for the hospital and the grave. The mischief was owing to the jealousy of some of the medical authorities, in the first place, who would not see, believe, or allow to be reported, the fact that the men were in any way ill-supplied, because these same doctors had specified the stores that would be wanted,—and next, to the absence of a department for the actual distribution of existing stores. With the bedding the case was the same as with the lime-juice and the rice: there was plenty; but it was not served out till too late. When the huts were inhabited, in the Crimea, and the wooden platforms had a dry soil beneath, and every man had a bed of some sort and three blankets, there was no more cholera or fever.
The American case is radically unlike that of any of the combatants in the Crimean War, because they are on the soil of their own country, within reach of their own railways, and always in the midst of the ordinary commodities of life. In such a position, they can with the utmost ease be supplied with whatever they really want,—so profuse as are the funds placed at the command of the authorities. Considering this, and the well-known handiness of Americans, there need surely be no disease and death from privation. This may be confidently said while we have before us the case of the British in the Crimea during the second winter of the war. A sanitary commission had been sent out; and under their authority, and by the help of experience, everything was rectified. The healthy were stronger than ever; there was scarcely any sickness; and the wounded recovered without drawback. As the British ended, the Americans ought to begin.
On the last two heads of the soldier's case there is little to be said here, because the American troops are at home, and not in a perilous foreign climate, and on the shores of a remote sea. Their drill can hardly be appointed for wrong hours, or otherwise mismanaged. In regard to transport, they have not the embarrassment of crowds of sick and wounded, far away in the Black Sea, without any adequate supply of mules and carriages, after the horses had died off, and without any organization of hospital ships at all equal to the demand. Neither do they depend for clothing and medicines on the arrival of successive ships through the storms of the Euxine; and they will never see the dreary spectacle of the foundering of a noble vessel just arriving, in November, with ample stores of winter clothing, medicines, and comforts, which six hours more would have placed in safety. Under the head of transport, they ought to have nothing to suffer.
Having gone through the separate items, and looking at the case as a whole, we may easily perceive that in America, as in England and France and every other country, the responsibility of the soldier's health in camp is shared thus.
The authorities are bound so to arrange their work as that there shall be no hitch through which disaster shall reach the soldiery. The relations between the military and medical authorities must be so settled and made clear as that no professional jealousy among the doctors shall keep the commanding officers in the dark as to the needs—of their men, and that no self-will or ignorance in commanding officers shall neutralize the counsels of the medical men. The military authorities must not depend on the report of any doctor who may be incompetent as to the provision made for the men's health, and the doctor must be authorized to represent the dangers of a bad encampment without being liable to a recommendation to keep his opinion to himself till he is asked for it. These particular dangers are best obviated by the appointment of sanitary officers, to attend the forces, and take charge of the health of the army, as the physicians and surgeons take charge of its sickness. If, besides, there is a separate department between the commissariat and the soldiery, to see that the comforts provided are actually brought within every man's grasp, the authorities will have done their part.
The rest is the soldier's own concern. When cruelly pressed by hardship, the soldiers in Turkey and the Crimea took to drinking; and what they drank was poison. The vile raid with which they intoxicated themselves carried hundreds to the grave as surely as arsenic would have done. When, at last, they were well fed, warm, clean, and comfortable, and well amused in the coffee-houses opened for them, there was an end, or a vast diminution, of the evil of drunkenness. Good coffee and harmless luxuries were sold to them at cost price; and books and magazines and newspapers, chess, draughts, and other games, were at their command. The American soldiery are a more cultivated set of men than these, and are in proportion more inexcusable for any resort to intemperance. They ought to have neither the external discomfort nor the internal vacuity which have caused drunkenness in other armies. The resort to strong drinks so prevalent in the Americans is an ever-lasting mystery to Europeans, who recognize in them a self-governing people, universally educated up to a capacity for intellectual interests such as are elsewhere found to be a safeguard against intemperance in drink. If the precautions instituted by the authorities are well supported by the volunteers themselves, the most fatal of all perils will be got rid of. If not, the army will perish by a veritable suicide. But such a fate cannot be in store for such an army.
There is something else almost as indispensable to the health of soldiers as sobriety, and that is subordination. The true, magnanimous, patriotic spirit of subordination is not more necessary to military achievement than it is to the personal composure and the trustworthiness of nerve of the individual soldier. A strong desire and fixed habit of obedience to command relieve a man of all internal conflict between self-will and circumstance, and give him possession of his full powers of action and endurance. If absolute reliance on authority is a necessity to the great majority of mankind, (which it is,) it is to the few wisest and strongest a keen enjoyment when they can righteously indulge in it; and the occasion on which it is supremely a duty—in the case of military or naval service—is one of privilege. Americans are less accustomed than others to prompt and exact obedience, being a self-governing and unmilitary nation: and they may require some time to become aware of the privileges of subordination to command. But time will satisfy them of the truth; and those who learn the lesson most quickly will be the most sensible of the advantage to health of body, through ease of mind. The abdication of self-will in regard to the ordering of affairs, the repose of reliance upon the responsible parties, the exercise of silent endurance about hardships and fatigues, the self-respect which relishes the honor of cooperation through obedience, the sense of patriotic devotedness which glows through every act of submission to command,—all these elevated feelings tend to composure of the nerves, to the fortifying of brain and limb, and the genial repose and exaltation of all the powers of mind and body. I need not contrast with this the case of the discontented and turbulent volunteer, questioning commands which he is not qualified to judge of, and complaining of troubles which cannot be helped. It is needless to show what wear-and-tear is caused by such a spirit, and how nerve and strength must, in such a case, fail in the hour of effort or of crisis, and give way at once before the assault of disease. By the aid of sobriety and the calm and cheerful subordination of the true military character, the health of the Federal army may be equal to its high mission: and all friends of human freedom, in all lands, must heartily pray that it may be so.
There is another department of the subject which I propose to treat of another month: "Health in the Military Hospital."