ts in the Crimea.[42] Seventy
surgeons died in the French army in the same war. It is not reasonable,
then, to suppose that all or nearly all the cases of sickness, whether
in hospital or in camp, can be recorded, especially at times when they
are the most abundant.

Nor do the cases of sickness of every sort, grave and light, recorded
and unrecorded, include all the depressions of vital energy and all the
suspensions and loss of effective force in the army. Whenever any
general cause of depression weighs upon a body of men, as fatigue, cold,
storm, privation of food, or malaria, it vitiates the power of all, in
various degrees and with various results; the weak and susceptible are
sickened, and all lose some force and are less able to labor and attend
to duty. No account is taken, none can be taken, of this discount of the
general force of the army; yet it is none the less a loss of strength,
and an impediment to the execution of the purposes of the Government.

INVALIDING.

The loss of force by death, by sickness in hospital and camp, and by
temporary depression, is not all that the army is subject to. Those who
are laboring under consumption, asthma, epilepsy, insanity, and other
incurable disorders, and those whose constitutions are broken, or
withered and reduced below the standard of military requirement, are
generally, and by some Governments always, discharged. These pass back
to the general community, where they finally die. By this process the
army is continually sifting out its worst lives, and at the same time it
fills their places with healthy recruits. It thus keeps up its average
of health and diminishes its rate of mortality; but the sum and the
rates of sickness and mortality in the community are both thereby
increased.

During the Crimean War, 17.34 per cent, were invalided and sent home
from the British army, and 21 per cent, from the French army, as unable
to do military service. By this means, 11,994[43] British and 65,069[44]
French soldiers were lost to their Governments. The army of the United
States, in the Mexican War, discharged and sent home 12,252 men, or 12
per cent, of the entire number engaged in that war, on account of
disability.

The causes of this exhaustion of personal force are manifold and
various, and so generally present that the number and proportion of
those who are thus hopelessly reduced below the degree of efficient
military usefulness, in the British army, has been de