MORTALITY OF BRITISH TROOPS AT HOME AND ABROAD.
SOME years ago the public was startled by the announce- ment that the British Army, which consists of picked men and of men in the prime of life, was the most unhealthy part of the British population ; that the mortality among our troops in time of war was by no means necessarily or always much greater than in time of peace ; that the numbers slain in battle or dying of their wounds bore no proportion to the numbers who died in barracks, in country quarters, and in garrison towns in the most ordinary years ; and that some of our crack regiments, consisting of the finest men, living in the most comfortable fashion, and exposed to no casualties or un- usual risks, died faster than any others. Naturally enough these revelations both astonished and disgusted the people, who were well aware that the English soldier is a costly as well as a valuable animal, and that as he is not allowed to take care of himself double care ought to be taken of him by those to whom he is given in charge. An inquiry was ordered; a Royal Commission was appointed and made its report in 1858; a second Commission was issued in 1859 to inquire into the sanitary condition of the Indian army, and has just now published the results of its labours in two ponderous blue-books ; and from these documents, and one or two others lying before us, we will give our readers a brief outline of the facts of the case.
The rumours which gave rise to the first investigation were fully borne out by the report, and were shown not even to have been exaggerated. It appeared that the mortality among the Foot Guards, who are stationed chiefly in London, was nearly three times, and that of the Infantry of the Line more than twice, as great as that which prevailed among other picked bodies of men, and in England generally, among the male population at the soldiers' ages, say from 20 to 55. The following comparison was given by the late Lord Herbert when Minister of War.
As the Infantry of the Line, however, constitute the chief portion of the Army, it appeared that the average mortality among all the troops was 17 per 1,000 every year. Yet every soldier is subjected to a rigorous medical examination before he is enrolled ; he is then fed, clothed, and lodged at the public cost -without any sparing of expense, and is, therefore, supposed to be well-fed, clothed, and lodged ; he is never overworked, is exposed to little fatigue and to few casualties; and ought, in consequence, to have, in technical phrase, "the best life" in Europe.
When the causes of this alarming and most discreditable result came to be investigated the explanation was simple enough, but reflected the deepest blame on the mingled ignorance and carelessness of the military authorities. The most obvious sanitary principles appeared to have been Healthy Districts .
Agricultural Labourers All England . . Large Towns .
Household Cavalry . Dragoon Guards . . Infantry of the Line .
Foot Guards . . AT THE SOLDIERS' AGES. 7-0 7.6 • 8-8 • 8.9 —Average . . 8-1
• 7.7 • 8-0 • 9-2 • 12-0
—Average . . 9.2 • 11-0 • 13-3 • 18-7 • 20-4 —Average. . 159
DEATHS PER 1,000 MEN YEARLY
London Fire Brigade- Metropolitan Police . . Navy, on Home Stations City Police . . habitually neglected. The soldier, compared with the police- man, was injudiciously and imperfectly clad, and absurdly exposed without adequate protection or subsequent caution to the inclemency of the weather. The barracks in which he was crowded were always ill-ventilated, usually ill-drained, and often thoroughly unhealthy. His food was disgustingly and unwholesomely same. His days were invariably and monotonously idle, he was devoured with ennui, bad drink and bad women became his only amusements, and intem- perance and debauchery soon caused him to pass much of his time in the hospital, and prepared him to succumb easily to any serious malady.
The late Lord Herbert, with the invaluable and inde- fatigable assistance of Miss Nightingale, devoted all his energies to improve this deplorable state of matters. Under his auspices, public zeal and official interest were aroused ; new barracks and hospitals were built and old ones were altered and amended ; decent recreations were provided (though not yet work, the best recreation of all); the diet was modified and varied, and sundry changes of clothing and sentry-work were introduced. There is still much room for further improvement, but the effect of what has been already done is wonderful. Miss Nightingale, in a paper written last year, says, "The mortality of the Infantry of the Line serving at home has been reduced from 18 per 1,000 to 8.5, and is now actually less than that of the English male popula- tion at the soldiers' ages, instead of being double, as it formerly was." Sir George C. Lewis, in moving the Army Estimates in March, 1862, entered at greater length into the details of the wonderful improvement that had been effected—an improve- ment equivalent to an annual saving, if extended over the whole British Army, of 2,200 men, or more than two entire regiments ; not to mention a corresponding diminution of disabling sickness. The change, in fact, amounts to an augmentation of the effective force of the Army by about five regiments, and thus saves half a million of money. Sir G. C. Lewis's comparison was as follows :—Contrasting the ten years from 1836 to 1846 with the years 1859 and 1860, and taking into account only the troops at home, the annual deaths among the Household Cavalry had been reduced from 14 to 6 per 1,000, those in the Cavalry of the Line from 15 to 7, in the Artillery from 15 to 6, in the Foot Guards from 21 to 9, and in the Infantry from 18 to 9. In the colonies and military stations abroad the advance had been quite as remarkable :—At Gibraltar the mortality had fallen from 13 to 9, at Malta from 18 to 14, in the Ionian Isles from 16 to 10, in Canada from 17 to 10, at Bermuda from 35 to 11, in Jamaica from 60 to 17, and in Ceylon from 39 to 27.
Thus far, it will be observed, we have said nothing of the Indian Army, that is, of the British troops serving in India. Here the case is still worse, and amendment has not yet begun. Indeed, it is only from the report just published that we have learned the facts. They are actually appalling. The average :mortality per 1,000 of our soldiers at home, as we have seen, is now about 9; it was 18; in India it is 69. The same causes of sickness and death prevail there as here, only aggravated tenfold by the heat of the climate. Malaria prevails at nearly every station ; the barracks are ill-located, ill-constructed, ill-ventilated, and scarcely at all drained; the water is bad and scanty ; the diet and the clothing more or less obstinately unsuited to the climate ; the soldier is bored to death with ennui, and is encouraged and almost ordered to be idle, lest exposure to the sun should bring on disease. Out of 73,000 men, 5,880, or nearly one-twelfth, are always in hospital, that is, nearly six regiments out of seventy, and one- third of the entire Army suffers from syphilis. This enormous amount of sickness and mortality renders the recruiting of the Indian Army a most formidable difficulty and expense. About 9,000 additional men are wanted every year-5,000 to replace those who die, about 3,500 to replace those who need not die but do. The Commissioners report that the excess of sick and in hospital is 3,800, and the excess of deaths 3,500, above what need be and ought to be ; that the aggregate of these is 7,300 men, and that if illness and mortality were reduced to the rates which alone ought to prevail, and need prevail, we should save seven whole regiments and 800,000/. a year. That the excessive mortality of our troops in India might be prevented—reduced, that is, from 69 per 1,000 to 20— the facts published by the Commission leave no doubt. Every cause of mortality now prevails ; every cause except the climate (which is the least of all) might be mitigated or removed. In the first place, we find that the mortality at different Indian stations varies immensely, not according to the heat, but according to the position and arrangement of the camps and barracks. At Trichinopoly, the hottest place in
the whole Peninsula, the deaths, instead of the average of 69 per 1,000, have ranged from 31 down to only 20; and on the Malabar coast, also tropical, they stand at 21 pretty regularly. At the different Bengal stations, on the other hand, and even in places far up the country, they average 78, 91, and 102 per 1,000; and some regiments have lost as many as 200 and upwards year after year out of their original strength. In the next place, it is observed that the officers, who share all the fatigues of the men, and are exposed just as much to the heat, only die at the rate of 38 per 1,000, instead of 69, because they live in better ventilated rooms, lead a less monotonous and idle life, and indulge less in debauchery. And, thirdly, the civil servants of the Company, who work incomparably harder than the military men, who live in the same districts, and are subject to all the same climatic and unavoidable unhealthy in- fluences, have an average death-rate of only 20 in the 1,000. The mortality among them varies in the Bengal Presidency from 20 to 41; in Bombay from 24 to 26; and in Madras is as low as from 14 to 18. Two per cent., therefore, the report assumes, is the highest necessary rate of mortality in India. "Any excess above this (they say) is due to other causes." It is now seven per cent. One twentieth of our Indian soldiers die annually from preventible causes.
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