Observations on the report of the Sanitary Commissioners in the Crimea, during the years 1855 and 1856 / by Sir John Hall.

  • Hall, John, Sir, 1795-1866.
Date:
[1857]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the report of the Sanitary Commissioners in the Crimea, during the years 1855 and 1856 / by Sir John Hall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    to have had authority gi'anted to us by Government to accomplish ourselves ; and that their sole aim and. object was to aid us, and strengthen our hands as friends—an apt illustration, I fear, of the old adage of Save me from my friends! Of the condition of the Hospitals at Scutari, on the arrival of the Commissioners, I am unable to speak from personal knowledge, but they ought not to have been in the dirty state, either within or without, that has been described by them, if the orders which were originally sent down to the principal Medical Officer there had been attended to; but when they draw the comparison which they do in the table given at page 60 of their Keport, and ascribe the decreased mortality in the Hospitals from March to June 1855, to their own trifling sanitary improvements in and around the Barracks at Scutari, one cannot help smiling at their so wilfully shutting their eyes to the fact of the improved health and condition of the army in the Crimea, from whence the sick in the Hospitals on the Bosphorus were supplied. But to place this in an intelligible light, and enable the reader to estimate the labors of the Commissioners at their true value, in reducing the number of sick, and amount of mortality in the Scutari Hospitals, it is only necessary to state the number of sick which was sent down from the Crimea to Scutari, and the number of deaths that occurred on the passage, during the quarters ending 31st March, 1855, and 30th June, 1855. During the quarter ending 31st March, 1855, 6,284 sick, soldiers were sent down from the Crimea to Scutari, and of these 258 died on the passage : Whereas during the quarter ending 30th June, 1855, to which the labors of the Commissioners, in the table which they have given at page 50 of their Eeport relate, not more than 3,193 sick were sent down, and of these only 19 died on the passage ! thus proving in an incontes- table manner, I think that more powerful agencies were at work in modifying the type of disease under which those men labored who were sent down to the Scutari Hospitals during the second period than is admitted in the Keport, and which must have exercised greater influence over the mortality there, than the traps of the privy drains, and other arrangements of the Sanitary