The Press. — London, England, 1857-11-14 00:00:00

1116 MIMES EPROUVEES PAR L'AIIIIEE. tie chiffre des tleces, ala date du 30 mars 1856, 62,492 s'elovait bepuis cette 6 poque jusqua'it la fin di l'evacuation (periode du typhus et du cholera, il est mort 4,504 'townies ), ci Total des feces eonstates 47,036 Le nonibre des 'mottles disparus qu'il y a lieu de porter au compte des pertes de l'armee est de 1,781 Militaires qui out peri dans le naufrage de la Semi .. Total des pertea de l'armee RETOUR. Militaires rentra isolaleut en convalescence ou - - - 69;229 o:,,009 en conge L'effectif de l'arrnee d'Orient, att 30 mars 1850, e.tait de 110,210 nommes, 140,210 ci Savoir :En Crimea 120,170 En Turquie: 148,240 Sous lee acmes 15,310 25,761 Aux hOpitaux 10,448 chiffre des aces survenus ppntlant l'evacuation est, aiasi qu'on l'a vit plus mit, de li 11 est done revenu d'Orient depai.s la --- signature de la pall Corps rappeles de l'armee avant la signature de la pair .. Total des hommea revenus de l'arniee 227,135 RESUME. On a transportsen Orient Les pertes de l'annee stmt. de 2440,039 11 est reveals d'Orient en France et en Algerie.. 227,13.) Difference Dans ce dernier chitfre sont compris, (rune part, tous les individus qui, sans etre lies au drapeau, sont partis avec l'armee ou ass suite, et, trautre part, les offi2ieri et soldats qui ont ete embargues phisieurs fois pour l'Orient. Ce sont des militaires relives en France en convalescence ou en cone et qui sont retournes a Farmers apres leur retahlissement on respiration de leur conge : As figurent au moins deux fois daus le chiffee total des hommes embargoes. Dr. Bryce impugns the veracity of this re. port : The military critic needs not to have pointed out the very equivocal terms employed in this tabular statement. It is for others that I venture to indicate certain ano malies and misleading phrases. (1) By effective strength (reffecliv) is usually meant soldiers fit for immediate active service ; hut in this category are numbered the ambulance sick in the Crimea on the 30th Mandl, who, according to M. Baudens, amounted to 19,048 in the preceding month; besides the above 10,448 under treat ment in hospitals on the Bosphorus on the very day when the report calls them eifectives. By this means the War Minister augments his numerical belligerent force by upwards of 30,000 nominally effective troops, and so makes it appear dint 73.41 per cent. of the Crimean army was restored to France after the signature of peace in a fit condition to have continued active hostilities—a demonstrable fallacy. (2) Fifteen thousand troops, col lected in the regimental sick depots outside Constan tinople and elsewhere, are similarly designated and regis tered. (3) The Ministerial reporter allows himself a margin of 12,400 men not specifically accounted for. With regard to this rather considerable item, being, in the phraseology of the report, " une difference eutre les en vois de troupes et des hommes revenus de l'arinee," it is obscurely explained thet the number is made up in pact of persons subsequently disrated as soldiers, though so classed and counted on embarkation, and in part of others who, returning from and proceeding to the East oftener than once, were in consequence reckoned as mul tiples of a single individual, and thus to an indefinite degree enhancing the parer strength of the army. Mili tary readers may probably extract a more professional meaning Clan the writer is able to do out of the original text, for which purpose ti.e passage is given. They will please to remark that in the " deport" of the report the total are called " troupes," in the " retour,' " hommes." Ought the " difference " to go to the reduction of the former sum and consequent proportionate increment of losses by death and otherwise? or is it simply a novel mode of balancing the debit and credit sides of an impe rial expenditure of which the particulars cannot be pro duced—a device for concealing the disappearance from the muster-roll of any number of persons not otherwise accounted for?—in which category French surgeons have assured Inc were many hundreds embarked at Kamiesch for hospitals on the Bosphorus, but who found a resting plaee mid-channel. M. Baudens declares that, at one time, two hundred soldiers died daily between the Crimea and Constantinople. Another strange avowal for a mili tary return is that 1,780 men have unaccountably dis appeared—" disparus." They are added to the total loss, bat no records vouch for the time, place, or manner of their deaths. Hence is obvious the impossibility of making a really just and useful comparison between the losses by deaths sustained by the two armies respectively —the terms and elements of calculation furnished by each not being equivalent. Moreover, the French War Minister's report dues not, except in one instance, dis tinguish betwixt the deaths, the result of actual fighting, and those from camp diseases alone. This important dis tinction is made in the English published returns. Again, the latter distinguish the numbers invalided, while the THE P B SS, NOVEMBER 14, 1857. former include under one cipher invalids, convalescents, and congas returned to France. A ud further, he boldly states that, as the result of careful observation and analysis, lie is con vinced the Emperor of the French was much influenced in his desire to make peace in 'HMS ------ - - from the following causes : First, that the French army had become in numbers and discipline, materiel, resources, and moral force infe rior to that of England; second, that an exhaustive pro cess was in activity and could not be stayed, which put in jeopardy its military status among the allies; third, that large conscriptions would excite murmurs and memo ries among a peasantry not rewarded for sacrifices of kindred, as nnclor the first Napoleon, by daily bulletins of military glory and conquered territory. On the shores of the Bosphorus I reasoned myself to these conclusions; since then I have again examined the grounds on which they are founded. Let me endeavour to make their truth and force equally evident to those who do me the honour to accompany me—first, in a medical visit to the French Crimea n ambulances in the winter of 1855 ; accord, on a professional inspection of, and resi dence in, the French hospitals on tha Bosphorus in February and March, 1856 ; third, to an examination of the specific diseases which prevailed in the one and the other at those periods. Itwould far exceed our space to follow at any length the careful and minute comparisons drawn by Dr. Bryce between the French and English medical systems, whether on the field or in hospital; we shall content ourselves with merely giving his results. First, then, the actual losses of the French army he estimates at 93,000 men, in opposition to Marshal Vaillant's statement of 69,000, and the wretched state of the French hospitals he believes to have contributed materially to these losses. These hospitals during the war were constantly held up to us as models. Dr. Bryce very summarily disposes of these false statements. The French hospitals, he de clares, were far inferior to ours in every re. spect 11l ventilated and filthy, they were breeding-beds of fever. Nor was the condi tion of the patient superior to that of the hospital. The men were brought in and stretched on the foul bed from which a dead body had just been taken. It was " painfully evident," observes Dr. Bryce, that no personal ablution had preceded the patients being put to bed, nor had their shirts been removed since they entered the hospital. Under such circumstances we are not sur prised to hear that not one in fire of the men received in the French hospitals at Constanti nople were sent back to service in the Crimea. In his summary of the results of his inves tigations, Dr. Bryce places before us very ex plicitly the rise and progress of typhus in the French army in 1855-6, and he certainly sup ports his argument well : War for the French army on the actual terrain had, con sequently, become not more difficult on account of its I general sanitary state at this time, than impossible with this hospital provision for its casualties. To this result the utter prostration of the medical staff by death, disease, and disproportionate duties, had already contributed its significant share. Forty-six surgeons had died from typhus alone. Scarcely one escaped an attack. There was fear lest the sick would be left utterly withoat skilled help; while the Minister of War, implored to send out as many surgeons as possible, declared his inability to furnish any from France, because " II n'en avait plus a sa disposi tion, et le recrutement ne repondai: pas aux besoins."— (Baudens.) M. BALI lens seizes firmly. and boldly exposes this essen tial property of camp fever. "11 s'agissait de deployer des mesures energiques, sans quoi la mortalite eat ate sans limites." He made known to the Emperor, through the Minister of War, " dens quelle situation critique )'in vasion du typhus place l'arusee d'Orient." Again, refer ring to the same period—February, 1856—and circum stances, the same authority exclaims, " Nous etions menaces d'un veritable et affrenx dessstre." Another French officer of excellent means of information, speaking of this conjuncture, declared that " cette armee aurait certainernent pen toute entiere s'il avait fallu lui faire quelques marches en Crimee." So much for the acknowledged perilous position of the French army at the close of the war. The measures taken immediately upon the signature of peace, in order to arrest the progress of the distemper, confirm what I have advanced with regard to a state of war being incom patible with their adoption. First, Marshal Pelissier quitted his belligerent encampments, and formed new ones on the southern heights, three leagues distant from his former lines ; and, as far as practicable, a fresh em placement for hospital tents and huts was provided ; then, M. Bautlens, in virtue of exceptionable powers wisely con ferred on him, seized upon the same event to separate the typhus cases from those of ordinary diseases, —retaining the former in the Crimea, and transferring the others to Constantinople, to make room for whom six thousand sick were embarked for France within a month. By these I and other sanitary devices, admirably planned and deter iminedly carried out, he exalted medical science by estab lishing its control over this terrible destroyer, The Medecin-Inspecteur was able to congratulate the Minister for War that "le pail vint enfin mettre un terme a nos misi:res." The fidelity of these statements is attested by the mortality experienced in the French camp. Typhus, reported M. Baudens, " overflowed the hospitals, and " was found in the regimental tents." All this verifies the fact of an appalling amount of sickness in the French camp after the capture of Sebastopol. Dr. Bryce esti mates the strength of their Crimean army at the close of the war at below 50,000 men of all arms, including General D'Allonville's corps at Eupatoria, and that, from the rapid and contagious spread of the disease, the break down and utter inefficiency of the hospital sanitary resources of the army, the further prosecution of the war was impractica ble, and that peace had become a necessity for the Emperor Napoleon. Without at all entering into all his conclusions; we must observe that we think Dr. Bryce has made out a powerful case against the assumed of oiency of the French hospital system, and we com mend his book, not only to those whom it will interest and instruct in England, but to those also on the other side of the channel who may desire to know the opinion expressed of their camp and hospital sanitary system by a British medical officer of rank. We have only to add, in conclusion , that a v a luab).e cha p ter 1 is given upon the treatment of typhus ado p ted in the French military hospitals. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED—NovEmutn 12. BOORS. -- The Lady of Glynne. By the Author of " Margaret and her Bridesmaids." Three Vols. Hurst and Blacken. A Short Course of History. Havilland he M. Cmell, P.D. Two Vols. Whittaker ant Co. Gymnastic Polymachinon. Captain Chiosse. Walton and Maberly. Poems of Oisin, Bard of Erin. Hawkins Simp son. Bosworth. Poems and Lyrics. Robert W. Buchanan. Hall and Virtue. Gazetler and Gazetteer Map of the Seat of Rebellion in Ind ia . J. Maden. Lives of the Lord Chancellers. Lord Campbell. J. Vol M . X. ' urray PERIODICALS. French Reading for Self Instruction. E. Wilson—The Shipwrecked Mariner's Magazine—The Chemistry of the World PAMPHLETS. A Sermon by the Rev. Francis Garden M.A. Rivingston —.4 !'indication against the Manifesto of Centralism. E. Stanford. HANOVER-SQUARE ROOMS. ONE of the best of winter-evening entertainments has commenced at these roams, and whoever has a penchant for dexterous tricks of legerdemain will not fail to study those performed by Professor Frikell. At first one is apt to conclude that all such tricks are more or less similar, and that having seen Robert Houdin or Anderson, nothing more re mains to be witnessed. That is only true m part. There are novelties in tricks, as in every other art, and, besides , if we only see . the old tricks done more cleverly th an b y any previous magician, there is something satisfactory in that. M. Frikell differs from all previous masters of the art in this, that he relies upon no extraneous aid for effects. He stands upon a bare and unptetending platform,with a couple of chairs as his " properties," and, dressed in simple evening costume, car ries on his operations close under the eyes of his audience. To say that he executes his va rious tricks cleverly is poor praise ; he really sur passes every other master in the art, for the point in all such perfomanoes is the execution amid in this M. Frikell is must completely successful. lt is impossible to notice h is tricks in detail; but among the best are the pigeon trick and the Cali fornian researches. The pigeon trick is admirably well done. A pigeon is cut up, its members distri buted, wrapped in paper, among the audience. A bottle of wine is then produce d ; the bottle 14 clearly full of liquid, some is even poured out. The professor strikes it with his wand, smashes it . to piece", and lo ! out comes the pigeon, whole, alive, and dry, and flies through the room. The Cali fornian researches are also equally good. A hat is borrowed, shaken, tapped, and proved to be empty, w hen suddenly the professor pulls out, o ne after the other, no less than 120 large metal cup s ; and there is no doubt at all about their number or sub stantial quality. A cargo of loose cards are then jerked out of the hat on the stage. The hat then is