Report to the Right Hon. Lord Panmure, G.C.B., &c., Minister at War, of the proceedings of the Sanitary Commission dispatched to the seat of war in the East, 1855-56 / presented to both Houses of Parliament, by command of Her Majesty, March 1857.

  • United Kingdom. Sanitary Commission (1855-1856)
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report to the Right Hon. Lord Panmure, G.C.B., &c., Minister at War, of the proceedings of the Sanitary Commission dispatched to the seat of war in the East, 1855-56 / presented to both Houses of Parliament, by command of Her Majesty, March 1857. 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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    In this table there are some remarkable features. Fevers were of the conth^uetl type in October, while the men were undergoing fatigue under a hot sun. In November, when the rains had set in, the prevailing type was the remittent or endemic; and after a prolonged continuance of wet, with increasing privation, and coldness of weather, the remittent fevers assumed typhoid sj'mptoms, with complications either of pneumonia or of dysentery. Bowel Diseases—Choleraic disease presented its highest intensity in October, when the men were first brought into relation with the morbific causes existing among the troops. It maintained intensity to the end of December, and then declined; but its cognate and milder ally, serous diarrhoea, was not absent through the winter months. The dvsenteric or inflammatory form became pathologically more severe, although numerically less frequent, after November. This increase of intensity in individual cases was owing to the introduction of the scorbutic cachexy, that greatly modified the bowel diseases, by implanting a tendency to ulceration of the mucous surface, especially of the large intestine. Scorbutic Disease commenced in November. Its first indications were pains of the limbs, mostly of the lower extremities, and aggra- vated diarrhoea, often lienteric, which required, in its treatment, that regard should be had to the scorbutic taint of the system. The cases classified Scurvy, are here restricted to those which presented lesions of the capillary vessels, and some disintegration of the soft solids on the external surface. As I apprehend that some of the cases classed Rheumatism, in the early part of the winter, may have been of the scorbutic cachexy in its milder manifestations, the entries for that disease are shown in the table. . •, , i ^ • c This should, however, be borne in mmd, that the entnes tor rheumatism underwent an almost unaccountable decrease in December, coteraporaneously with the supply of warm clothing; while scurvy, in the restricted sense defined above, did not disappear until alter Januarv, subsequently to a distribution of succulent fruits, m addition to a fuller allowance of lime-juice. Tubercular Disease.—The almost entire absence of this cachexy, is equally remarkable with the inordinate predominance ot other forms of disease. . 11 i * i. i <-„ Amid so great privation and exposure, it would be natural to expect, that unsuspected hereditary predisposition would develop itself into tubercular disease of the lungs or glandular system ; but from these maladies there has been, on the contrary, a remarkable ' Pxemntion During the winter months there was no case ot ;Sis di'smissed fr'om the brigade. In March and May there was °Atlrtti'ht'this immunity would seem to foreshow a very heaW y cl LteTone, at all events, not propitious to the developrnent oftuberculosis; this conclusion cannot, however, be accepted xvithout further experience of Crimean winters. Sometfi'^^^^^^^^ attaches to this, that when causes productive of generic diseases, especially those of epidemic or of endemic ongm those that expend their morbific impulse on any particular set I] orgat a^e predS^ then other sets of organs possess a certain