d ignorance or neglect of what
we now know as sanitary laws.... Similar infections continued
occasionally to scourge our ships' companies, and still more
frequently French and Spanish ships' companies, till near the
close of the eighteenth century.' It is not likely that any evidence
would suffice to divert from their object writers eager to hurl
calumny at a great sovereign; but a little knowledge of naval
and of military history also would have saved their readers from
a belief in their accusations. In 1727 the fleet in the West
Indies commanded by Admiral Hosier, commemorated in Glover's
ballad, lost ten flag officers and captains, fifty lieutenants,
and 4000 seamen. In the Seven Years' war the total number belonging
to the fleet killed in action was 1512; whilst the number that
died of disease and were missing was 133,708. From 1778 to 1783,
out of 515,000 men voted by Parliament for the navy, 132,623 were
'sent sick.' In the summer, 1779, the French fleet cruising at
the mouth of the English Channel, after landing 500, had still
about 2000 men sick. At the beginning of autumn the number of
sick had become so great that many ships had not enough men to
work them. The _Ville_de_Paris_ had 560 sick, and lost 61. The
_Auguste_ had 500 sick, and lost 44. On board the _Intrepide_
70 died out of 529 sick. These were the worst cases; but other
ships also suffered heavily.

It is, perhaps, not generally remembered till what a very late
date armies and navies were more than decimated by disease. In
1810 the House of Commons affirmed by a resolution, concerning
the Walcheren Expedition: 'That on the 19th of August a malignant
disorder showed itself amongst H.M. troops; and that on the 8th
of September the number of sick amounted to upwards of 10,948
men. That of the army which embarked for service in the Scheldt
sixty officers and 3900 men, exclusive of those killed by the
enemy, had died before the 1st of February last.'

In a volume of 'Military, Medical, and Surgical Essays'[73] prepared
for the United States' Sanitary Commission, and edited by Dr.
Wm. A. Hammond, Surgeon-General of the U.S. Army, it is stated
that, in our Peninsular army, averaging a strength of 64,227
officers and men, the annual rate of mortality from the 25th
of December 1810 to the 25th of May 1813 was 10 per cent. of
the officers and 16 per cent. of the men. We may calculate from
this that some 25,000 officers and men died. There were 22-1/2
per