[Account of activities of U.S. Sanitary Commission].

  • Snow, Edwin M. (Edwin Miller), 1820-1888.
Date:
[1861]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: [Account of activities of U.S. Sanitary Commission]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    f/J^v/ dW, __/$6/. To ?yiaJtx /?7r>% *?r Sir,—I beg leave to lav before you a brief outline of what the IT. S. Sanitary Commission has done, and is doing, and to submit to you the question, whether the public can afford to let this work be abandoned for want of means to carry it on. Its magnitude and importance are self evident. Our soldiers are in far greater peril from sickness than from the violence of enemies. Large portions of the Army are now in special and imminent danger of epidemic small-pox and typhus fever. We are daily losing, and under the most favorable conditions we shall continue to lose, three or four men by disease and exposure, for every man whose life is necessarily and usefully sacrificed in the service of his country. Accident or negli- gence may at any moment swell this inevitable waste of life and efficiency to the disastrous dimensions it assumed in the Crimean war, and in the Walcheren expedition. Its reduction to the lowest attainable point is the most con- siderable retrenchment that can be made in the cost of war. For every one of our soldiers is a costly piece of national prop- erty. His enlistment, equipment, and training, have cost some two hundred dollars at least. He will be worth many times that sum to the community as a producer when he returns to