679 per 1,000; and in January, 1855, owing to the great
exposures, hardships, and privations in the siege, and the very
imperfect means of sustenance and protection, the mortality increased to
the enormous rate of 1,142 per 1,000, so that, if it had continued
unabated, it would have destroyed the whole army in ten and a half
months.[22]

AMERICAN ARMY, 1812 TO 1814.

We need not go abroad to find proofs of the waste of life in military
camps. Our own army, in the war with Great Britain in 1812-14, suffered,
as the European armies have done, by sickness and death, far beyond men
in civil occupations. There are no comprehensive reports, published by
the Government, of the sanitary condition and history of the army on the
Northern frontier during that war. But the partial and fragmentary
statements of Dr. Mann, in his "Medical Sketches," and the occasional
and apparently incidental allusions to the diseases and deaths by the
commanding officers, in their letters and despatches to the Secretary of
War, show that sickness was sometimes fearfully prevalent and fatal
among our soldiers. Dr. Mann says: "One regiment on the frontier, at one
time, counted 900 strong, but was reduced, by a total want of a good
police, to less than 200 fit for duty." "At one period more than 340
were in the hospitals, and, in addition to this, a large number were
reported sick in camp."[23] "The aggregate of the army at Fort George
and its dependencies was about 5,000. From an estimate of the number
sick in the general and regimental hospitals, it was my persuasion that
but little more than half of the army was capable of duty, at one
period, during the summer months"[24] of 1813. "During the month of
August more than one-third of the soldiers were on the sick-reports."[25]
Dr. Mann quotes Dr. Lovell, another army-surgeon, who says,
in the autumn of 1813: "A morning report, now before me, gives 75
sick, out of a corps of 160. The several regiments of the army, in their
reports, exhibit a proportional number unfit for duty."[26] Dr. Mann
states that "the troops at Burlington, Vt., in the winter of 1812-13,
did not number over 1,600, and the deaths did not exceed 200, from the
last of November to the last of February."[27] But Dr. Gallup says: "The
whole number of deaths is said to be not less than 700 to 800 in four
months," and "the number of soldiers stationed at this encampment
[Burlington] was about 2,500 to 2,800."[28] According to Dr. Mann's