On the causes of sickness in the English wars : and on the means of prevention / by E.A. Parkes.

  • Parkes, Edmund A. (Edmund Alexander), 1819-1876.
Date:
[1862]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the causes of sickness in the English wars : and on the means of prevention / by E.A. Parkes. 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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    Si % /• ) f 1 ) J ) I ! i J f t i 3 I i 1 i i i ) J I- 1- j),i ■ ' ‘ ' \ ON THE CAUSES OF SICKNESS IN THE ENGLISH^A'RS, AND/^* j. ON THE MEANS OF PREVENTION/ .'r :. I • - O I SS'f'^5^. A. Parkes, M.D., F.R.S., Professor of Militarv Hygiene in tlie. Army Medical School. ( ^ ^ •: y' / ■j^^tr^pjje ifouRNAL of the Royal United Service Institution, vM. vi‘. 'A.., .4 /p^ -• y y' y ' It is quite a truism to say that the great losses in war are not owing to shot or steel, but, like many other truisms, it is more often repeated than comprehended. Even to the mind of the soldier, the strife and peril of the battle-field throw into shade the more secret yet deadlier foes by which oftentimes campaigns are really decided and victories are really won. And yet, if there be anything a soldier ought to study out of his immediate profession, it should be those conditions which, in so many wars, have caused such losses by disease, that plans the best considered have been abandoned, courage the most heroic has been baffied, and causes the most sacred have been lost. Our own army does not, perhaps, offer so many examples of these disasters as the armies of other states, but even with us there is a long and sad catalogue of unfortunate and .unhappy enterprises, and a terrible list of soldiers’ lives which have not been taken on the battle-field. As it is manifestly a matter of greater interest to review our own history than to turn to the larger and darker experience of other nations, I shall venture to attempt the enumeration of the chief causes which have led to great losses by disease in some of our wars. The subject is, however, too vast to be treated in a single lecture, and all I can venture to do is to give a rapid summary, and to illustrate it by a few examples. As far as diseases are concerned, the history of almost all our wars presents a remarkable sameness. The same results on a larger or smaller scale repeat themselves. We are taught with what a terrible precision the same causes have stamped their marks on successive generations of soldiers, and how the pitiable history of one campaign might almost be stereotyped for nearly all the rest. Nor are these causes in any way peculiar, recondite, or mysterious. We are astonished to find how simple they are, how obvious, how apparently inadequate to produce such laree results. ^ A writer, in giving an account of the great loss on one occasion among British troops, when, out of 7,000 men, 5,000 men were sick at one time after enumerating the very simple conditions which had led to this end’ says,— ’ “ And yet when anxiously asked by the officers in command, what extraordinary cause could be assigned for an amount of sickness and