These records of land-battles show that the dangers from that cause are
not very great; probably they are less than the world imagines;
certainly they are much less than those of the camp. Of the 176,007
admitted into the regimental hospitals during the Peninsular War, only
20,886 were from wounds, the rest from diseases; fourteen-fifteenths of
the burden on the hospitals in that war, through forty-two months, were
diseased patients, and only one-fifteenth were wounded. In the Crimean
War, 11.2 per cent. in the hospitals suffered from injuries in battle,
and 88.8 per cent. from other causes. 10 per cent. of the French
patients in the same war were wounded, and 90 per cent. had fevers, etc.
In the autumn of 1814, there were 815 patients in the great military
hospital at Burlington, Vermont. Of these 50 were wounded, and the rest
had the diseases of the camp.

In the Crimean War, 16,296 died from disease, and 4,774 from injuries
received in battle. In the Peninsular War, 25,304 died of disease, and
9,450 from wounds.

During eighteen years, 1840 to 1857, 19,504 were discharged from the
home, and 21,325 from the foreign stations of the British army. Of
these, 541, or 2.7 per cent. of those at home, and 3,708, or 17.3 per
cent. abroad, were on account of wounds and fractures, and the others on
account of disease, debility, and exhaustion.

NATIONS DO NOT LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE TO PREPARE FOR ARMY-SICKNESS.

Nations, when they go to war, prepare to inflict injury and death on
their opponents, and make up their minds to receive the same in return;
but they seem neither to look nor to prepare for sickness and death in
their camps. And when these come upon their armies, they seem either to
shut their eyes to the facts, or submit to the loss as to a disturbance
in Nature, a storm, a drought, or an earthquake, which they can neither
prevent nor provide for, and for which they feel no responsibility, but
only hope that it will not happen again. Nevertheless, this waste of
life has followed every army which has been made to violate the laws of
health, in privations, exposures, and hardships, and whose internal
history is known. The experience of such disastrous campaigns ought to
induce Governments to inquire into the causes of the suffering and loss,
and to learn whether they are not engaged in a struggle against Nature,
in which they must certainly fail, and endeavoring to make the human
body bear burdens and labors which ar