A due supply of appropriate food and of pure air, sufficient protection and cleansing of the surface, moderate labor and refreshing rest, are the necessary conditions of health, and cannot be disregarded, in the least degree, without a loss of force. The privation of even a single meal, or the use of food that is hard of digestion or innutritious, and the loss of any of the needful sleep, are followed by a corresponding loss of effective power, as surely as the slackened fire in the furnace is followed by lessened steam and power in the engine.
Whosoever, then, wishes to sustain his own forces or those of his laborers with the least cost, and use them with the greatest effect, must take Nature on her own terms. It is vain to try to evade or alter her conditions. The Kingdom of Heaven is not divided against itself. It makes no compromises, not even for the necessities of nations. It will not consent that any one, even the least, of its laws shall be set aside, to advance any other, however important. Each single law stands by itself, and exacts complete obedience to its own requirements: it gives its own rewards and inflicts its own punishments. The stomach will not digest tough and hard or old salted meats, or heavy bread, without demanding and receiving a great and perhaps an almost exhausting proportion of the nervous energies. The nutritive organs will not create vigorous muscles and effective limbs, unless the blood is constantly and appropriately recruited. The lungs will not decarbonize and purify the blood with foul air, that has been breathed over and over and lost its oxygen. However noble or holy the purpose for which human power is to be used, it will not be created, except according to the established conditions. The strength of the warrior in battle cannot be sustained, except in the appointed way, even though the fate of all humanity depend on his exertions.
Nature keeps an exact account with all her children, and gives power in proportion to their fulfilment of her conditions. She measures out and sustains vital force according to the kind and fitness of the raw material provided for her. When we deal liberally with her, she deals liberally with us. For everything we give to her she makes a just return. The stomach, the nutrient arteries, the lungs, have no love, no patriotism, no pity; but they are perfectly honest. The healthy digestive organs will extract and pay over to the blood-vessels just so much of the nutritive elements as the food we eat contains in an extractible form, and no more; and for this purpose they will demand and take just so much of the nervous energy as may be needed. The nutrient arteries will convert into living flesh just so much of the nutritive elements as the digestive organs give them, and no more. The lungs will send out from the body as many of the atoms of exhausted and dead flesh as the oxygen we give them will convert into carbonic acid and water, and this is all they can do. In these matters, the vital organs are as honest and as faithful as the boiler, that gives forth steam in the exact ratio of the heat which the burning fuel evolves and the fitness of the water that is supplied to it; and neither can be persuaded to do otherwise. The living machine of bone and flesh and the dead machine of iron prepare their forces according to the means they have, not according to the ulterior purpose to which those forces are to be applied. They do this alike for all. They do it as well for the sinner as for the saint,—as well for the traitorous Secessionist striving to destroy his country as for the patriot endeavoring to sustain it.
In neither case is it a matter of will, but of necessity. The amount of power to be generated in both living and dead machines is simply a question of quality and quantity of provision for the purpose. So much food, air, protection given produce so much strength. A proposition to reduce the amount of either of these necessarily involves the proposition to reduce the available force. Whoever determines to eat or give his men less or poorer food, or impure air, practically determines to do less work. In all this management of the human body, we are sure to get what we pay for, and we are equally sure not to get what we do not pay for.
All Governments have tried, and are now, in various degrees, trying, the experiment of privation in their armies. The soldier cannot carry with him the usual means and comforts of home. He must give these up the moment he enters the martial ranks, and reduce his apparatus of living to the smallest possible quantity. He must generally limit himself to a portable house, kitchen, cooking-apparatus, and wardrobe, and to an entire privation of furniture, and sometimes submit to a complete destitution of everything except the provision he may carry in his haversack and the blanket he can carry on his back. When stationary, he commonly sleeps in barracks; but he spends most of his time in the field and sleeps in tents. Occasionally he is compelled to sleep in the open air, without any covering but his blanket, and to cook in an extemporized kitchen, which he may make of a few stones piled together or of a hole in the earth, with only a kettle, that he carries on his back, for cooking-apparatus. In all cases and conditions, whether in fort or in field, in barrack, tent, or open air, he is limited to the smallest artificial habitation, the least amount of furniture and conveniences, the cheapest and most compact food, and the rudest cookery. He is, therefore, never so well protected against the elements, nor, when sleeping under cover, so well supplied with air for respiration, as he is at home. Moreover, when lodging abroad, he cannot take his choice of places; he is liable, from the necessities of war, to encamp in wet and malarious spots, and to be exposed to chills and miasms of unhealthy districts. He is necessarily exposed to weather of every kind,—to cold, to rains, to storms; and when wet, he has not the means of warming himself, nor of drying or changing his clothing. His life, though under martial discipline, is irregular. At times, he has to undergo severe and protracted labors, forced marches, and the violent and long-continued struggles of combat; at other times, he has not exercise sufficient for health. His food is irregularly served. He is sometimes short of provisions, and compelled to pass whole days in abstinence or on shore allowance. Occasionally he cannot obtain even water to drink, through hours of thirsty toil. No Government nor managers of war have ever yet been able to make exact and unfailing provision for the wants and necessities of their armies, as men usually do for themselves and their families at home.
SUPPOSED DANGERS TO THE SOLDIER.
From the earliest recorded periods of the world, men have gone forth to war, for the purpose of destroying or overcoming their enemies, and with the chance of being themselves destroyed or overthrown. Public authorities have generally taken account of the number of their own men who have been wounded and killed in battle, and of the casualties in the opposing armies. Gunpowder and steel, and the manifold weapons, instruments, and means of destruction in the hands of the enemy are commonly considered as the principal, if not the only sources of danger to the soldier, and ground of anxiety to his friends; and the nation reckons its losses in war by the number of those who were wounded and killed in battle. But the suffering and waste of life, apart from the combat, the sickness, the depreciation of vital force, the withering of constitutional energy, and the mortality in camp and fortress, in barrack, tent, and hospital, have not usually been the subjects of such careful observation, nor the grounds of fear to the soldier and of anxiety to those who are interested in his safety. Consequently, until within the present century, comparatively little attention has been given to the dangers that hang over the army out of the battle-field, and but little provision has been made, by the combatants or their rulers, to obviate or relieve them. No Government in former times, and few in later years, have taken and published complete accounts of the diseases of their armies, and of the deaths that followed in consequence. Some such records have been made and printed, but these are mostly fragmentary and partial, and on the authority of individuals, officers, surgeons, scholars, and philanthropists.
It must not be forgotten that the army is originally composed of picked men, while the general community includes not only the imperfect, diseased, and weak that belong to itself, but also those who are rejected from the army. If, then, the conditions, circumstances, and habits of both were equally favorable, there would be less sickness and a lower rate of mortality among the soldiers than among men of the same ages at home. But if in the army there should be found more sickness and death than in the community at home, or even an equal amount, it is manifestly chargeable to the presence of more deteriorating and destructive influences in the military than in civil life.
SICKNESS AND MORTALITY IN CIVIL LIFE.
The amount of sickness among the people at home is not generally recognized, still less is it carefully measured and recorded. But the experience and calculations of the Friendly Societies of Great Britain, and of other associations for Health-Assurance there and elsewhere, afford sufficient data for determining the proportion of time lost in sickness by men of various ages. These Friendly Societies are composed mainly of men of the working-classes, from which most of the soldiers of the British army are drawn.