STILLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES' SANITARY COMMISSION.* AMONG the

various organizations which the late American War brought forth, none is better known in Europe than the United States' Sanitary Commission, and those who followed with some

attention its proceedings during the conflict may be apt to think, at first sight, that Mr. Stile's goodly octavo of over 550 pages was superfluous. A little reflection, however, will show that nothing is more useful than a complete record of any great and successful work ; and the failure to bequeath such a record of its labours to posterity was a serious error of our own Anti-Corn Law League. For there is always much that cannot be told whilst the work of any such body is going on, which is, nevertheless, very useful to be known afterwards ; and whatever may be the value of the publications issued by it during the course of its straggles to achieve the end which it has proposed to itself, they never can anticipate the calm retrospect of the future over those struggles themselves.

Let any one be tempted by such reflections to open Mr. Stille's volume, and he will be surprised at the amount of novel matter which,—mixed up, indeed, perhaps with much that he knew before, —he will find in it. The chapter on "Contributions from Cali- fornia and the Pacific Coast," for instance, which seems to promise only a treasurer's £ s. d. account, is full of varied and often grotesque interest. As far as the human eye can see, the whole success of the Commission turned upon the famous Califor-

nian gift, in the autumn of 1862, of 100,000 dollars, soon followed by another of the same amount. Three months more, we are-told, would, but for this, have probably brought the

Commission to a premature death. It was then receiving at the rate of 20,000 dollars a month, and spending at the rate of 26,000 dollars, with appalling calls upon its resources. But Califor- nia and the Pacific States from this time took upon themselves the main burthen of its finance. The former was in October, 1863,

directly called upon to contribute 25,000 dollars a month, and the appendix of "Contributions received from California" shows that,

exclusively of the 200,000 dollars and other early contributions up to November, 1862, the average receipts from the State, for forty- one months, up to the close of February, 1866, actuallyexceeded that monthly amount. History probably shows no instance of such sus- tained generosity on the part of so small a community.

But the mode of raising these contributions was no less remark- able than their amount. The "favourite method" of Californian charity, it seems, is that of selling an article by auction to the

highest bidder, with the implied understanding that "after paying fo-r it," he is "to give it back again to the auctioneer, to be resold to the same company." And now listen, 0 ye nymphs of tender or mature age, who smile across fancy-fair counters, and preside over lucky-bags, to that which shall surpass your most audacious devices, your wildest dreams of mercantile success in favour of your pet charities :— "Often have we seen one article—a white pullet, for instance—not intrinsically worth a dollar, sold to five or ten successive highest bidders for sums varying from five to twenty dollars, until the sum realized amounted to oirer 100 dollars. A bag of strawberries of herculean size, presented to the President of the Commission at the Sacramento pic- nic, was sold for a gold dollar for each strawberry (each the size of a pullet's egg), while the biggest was sold for 123 dollars ! On the same occasion, the train of the Pacific railroad (where some twenty cars were linked together), which carried the company to the grounds, being delayed for an hour by an unexpected obstruction, some enterprising passenger, who had brought his fowling-piece, stepped out into the chapparal and shot a hare, and than entering at the rear car, passed through the whole train, selling it to one after another, until he came out at the front with 157 dollars for the fund."

But we now come to a story of which the grotesqueness reaches perfectly colossal proportions. Imagine one of the aspirants to Metropolitan mayoralties under Mr. Mill's scheme exhibiting the

heroism of this defeated American candidate to municipal hononukyl "At Austin, Nevada, in the wildest part of the desert, half-way between Virginia City and Utah, the two candidates for the mayoralty of a city not two years old, but with 5,000 inhabitants, had each agreed if • History of the United States' Sanitary Commission: being the General Report of its Work during the War of the Rcbellion. By Charlee J. Still& Philadelphia Lipplacett. Vita. defeated to carry a sack of flour on his back from Austin to a neigh- bouring village, in broad day. Accordingly, when Mr. R. C. Gridley lost his election, he prepared to fulfil the engagement. Headed by a band of music in a waggon, leading his little boy clad in the national uniform by the hand, and with the sack of flour on his back, followed by a mongrel procession of miners and citizens, Mr. Gridley took up his foot-journey to the appointed place. Arrived there, the thought struck him that the gay spirits and the patriotic feelings of the crowd, that grew as he travelled, might be turned to humane account. He instantly proposed to sell the now famous sack of flour to the highest bidder. The humour took. The sack was sold again and again, netting 5,000 dollars. The amount realized fired Mr. Gridley's enthusiasm He started for a journey of 300 miles to Virginia City. Arriving on a Sunday, and finding a sanitary meeting going in the Opera House in the afternoon, he proceeded to the place, got admitted to the stage, and there telling the story, sold the sack to the audience for 580 dollars. The next morning, having procured a band of mask, he proceeded to make the tour of the neighbouring towns. . . . . . At Gold Hill, the -sack sold for 5,822 dollars and 50 cents ; at Silver City, for 830 dollars ; at Dayton, for 873 dollars. Finally, returning to Virginia City again, the sack, putting forth all its attractions, won a prodigious subscription of 12,025 dollars. Mr. Gridley. . . . arrived at Sacramento, 150 miles further west, just as the sanitary pic-nic at Bellows' Grove was in pro- gress. In the midst of the festivities he marched into the crowd, a band of music leading the way, a stalwart negro walking by his aide

carrying the sack. The sack did not fare as well here as before.

. . . . A good woman, finding a small island of a few rods square in the swamp, had erected a bridge of one plank, and established such a rate of toll, that to see nothing there cost the curiosity of some hun- dreds a half dollar each. Then the President of the Commission was invited to shake hands with some hundreds of the company, who bought the privilege at from fifty cents, to a double eagle apiece, making his bat their till, until it was literally half full of silver and gold. Under these rival excitements the sack was not favoured with its wonted *nooses. Carried thence to Sacramento, it was sold again, at a public lecture, by Dr. Bellows for several hundred dollars, and finally, trans- ported to San Francisco, it added moderate gains to its enormous harvest, even in that comparatively staid community. Six months afterwards, what was the surprise of the recorder of this strange his- tory, to find the sack with its irrepressible owner in New York, and on

its way to the great fair at St. Louis The sum realized by it to the Sanitary Fund cannot have been less than 40,000 dollars."

But enough of this charitable buffoonery, although its broad tumour serves thoroughly to show the earnestness of the American people in the cause; since none will deliberately and gratuitously snake fools of themselves for that which they do ,not care for. Suffice it to say, before .dismissing the financial side of the Com- mission's history, that its total receipts appear to have been, in round numbers, nearly 5,000,000 dollars in cash, from June 27, 1861, to January 1, 1866, and 15,000,000 dollars' worth of supplies, besides "2,000,000 dollars more at the very least" received and expended by the branch treasuries, making in all about 4,500,0001. expended in four years and a half by the American people in connection with a single voluntary institution for the relief and benefit of its soldiers.

This is, however, the mere gilded outside of the work. What lies beneath is of very different texture. We have here, for the first time, the full history, though much of it was known before, 'of the difficulties which the Commission had to encounter, for some considerable period after its first organization, from official ill-will and red-tapeism. It may, indeed, somewhat comfort impatient philanthropists of the Old World to find that the great goddess Routine has shown herself quite as mighty in the New to thwart newfangled schemes of benevolence, and the impertinent curiosity of ignoramuses who want to know, as in the most vener- able of European or Asiatic Circumlocution offices. Nay, Mr. Stillti pointedly contrasts the position of the members of the United States' Sanitary Commission with that of the British Sanitary Commission, and of Miss Nightingale during the Crimean War, declaring that "no such extraordinary powers as were conferred upon these" (the British) "Commissioners, and fully exercised by them when it was necessary, to ac- complish their object, were ever granted by the Government of the United States to any body of men outside of the regular mili- tary organization." Yet, although it may be true that the want of such powers as those wielded by the British Commissioners may have cost "thousands of lives" and "millions of dollars" to the country, it is, perhaps, doubtful whether the American Com- mission did not, on the whole, do its work all the better through being thus compelled to cast itself resolutely upon the sympathies of the nation, to rest wholly upon the public confidence which its services should earn for it.

The great fact which stands out from its history indeed is, that on however large a scale relief may be distributed to the suffer- ers by the casualties of .warfare, yet prevention, not relief, should be the main object of all sanitary science, in war as well as in peace. This the Commissioners steadily kept in view from the first; and though it may have best endeared itself to the indi- vidual soldier by its care of him when wounded or struck down by sickness, its most efficient services were really those of organiz- ing the inspection of camps and hospitals, reforming these latter, reorganizing - the Medical Bureau, &c. Of the reality of preven- tive sanitary science no more convincing proof can be given than that afforded by the Military Department of the "Gulf," includ- ing that notoriously unhealthy Delta of the Mississippi, the almost perennial habitat of yellow fever. New Orleans "was cleansed under General Butler's order as it had never been cleansed before, a rigid quarantine was enforced, the quarters of the troops in the forts and in the various camps were thoroughly policed, needless exposure to the fierce rays of the tropical sun, or to the deadly poison of the night atmosphere in the neighbourhood of the swamps, was avoided, a minute care was exercised with regard to the clothing and food of the troops which was entirely unknown in other portions of the Army." Not only did no yellow fever appear in the summer of 1862, but early in July of that year the whole number of sick out of about 20,000 men (then indeed in garrison) was under 2i per cent. And "this favourable state of health among the troops in the Department of the Gulf was maintained throughout the whole war." In November, 1863, the Commission's Inspector, Dr. Crane, wrote, "I have never seen so little disease among troops in the field. But little over 4 per cent. of the present force is on the sick list." So, again, on.the malarious coast of South Carolina, among those marshy inlets in the midst of which it had been held that "no unacclimated white person could pass even a single night during the autumnal months, without imminent risk to his health and life," the Northern troops "remained for years, not only with- out showing any marked ill effect from the climate, but actually exhibiting a sickness-rate less elevated than that of any division of the Army."

One of the most curious chapters in Mr. Stilld's volume is that on "The Commission's Bureau of Vital Statistics." The inquiries undertaken by this department extended not only to hygienic data properly so called, but to many others, such as the ages and physical characteristies of soldiers enlisting. "One inspector was employed upon the examination and measurement of Union soldiers, whilst another was similarly engaged with rebel prisoners." The materials collected have not yet received full investigation, but we are told that the results of such investigation will not only serve to determine the relative efficiency for military service of men at different ages, and of different physical peculiarities," but "the laws of human growth while approaching the maximum stature ; of pulmonary capacity as dependent upon physical proportions and upon age ; of strength as related to ago and rate ; of complexion, stature, and previous occupation as affecting strength and endur- ance," &c. Amongst other things, "the number of men enlisted at different ages was found to follow a definite mathematical law with marvellous precision," whilst " the ages of the officers were found to follow an entirely diverse law, bearing no resemblance whatever to that regulating the ages of the enlisted men ; and on comparing these two laws with that of the population, this latter was found to be utterly dissimilar to that of either of the others." A singular proof of the homogeneousness which the American people is already acquiring is afforded by the fact, that the proportion of enlistments according to age " scarcely shows any token of variation, whether the enlistments were made in Maine, in Pennsylvania, in Michigan, or in Iowa." In a quite dif- ferent sphere of observation, another remarkable fact may be quoted from the results of the Commission's investigation concern- ing the effect of forced marches, viz., "that the efficiency of troops during and after the severest marches depends in a great degree upon their diet, the exhausting effect of-long and hurried marches being of small significance in comparison with the effect for good or ill of the diet provided for them on the way." Is not the same likely to be the case as respects other forms of physical exertion ? And may not the fact thus established on the other side of the Atlantic dispose sufficiently of the pleadings of certain ironmasters for the reduction to Belgian wages, and consequently to a Belgian diet, of English coal-miners and iron-workers?