The Press.
London, England, 1855-02-10 00:00:00

OUR SICK IN THE CRIMEA.

IF anything were wanted to convince us of the utter
state of misery and prostration which enfolds our brave
soldiers in the Crimea with such deadly grasp, it
would be the reported letter of Dr. Ham., the chief
medical officer in the camp, to the principal medical
officer at Scutari, stating that he is to speedily
expect an additional 5,0(X) sick from Lalaklava, with
the prospective augmentation of fully half the men
who are under arms at present in the camp. To
meet this alarming increase of sickness, they are, of
course, forced at Scutari to every shift and con-
trivance : new hospitals are being hastily erected,
convalescents are being hurried off, and every pre-
paration is being made to obtain covered rooms for
the reception of these additional five thousand
wasted bodies of poor sutferers. However hasty
such preliminary preparations must. necessarily be,
we should yet have hoped to find thnt the internal
organisation of the hospitals was in a more
efficient state after four months' trial than at the
commencement of the campaign. But where is the
Use of any longer glossing over the fact or speaking
of it mildly in the hope that improvement is daily
going on' The arrangement in the Crimea for
the transport and hospital care of our sick and
wounded are in the same deplorable state of
miserable mismanagement and disgusting neglect
as they ever were. With only one exception (the
steamer Melbourne) the vessels employed for the
transport of the sick, are still—weeks upon weeks
after the thing has been pointed out to the Govern-
ment by every journal in the kingdom—are still, we
repeat, without beds, blankets, medical stores, or
even medical care, for those unhappy men who are
thrust on board, and laid side by side, wrapped in
their one regulation blanket, covered with filth and
vermin, and left., on the average, to a week of hor-
rible suffering that no words can depict, no expres-
sion can convey to the mind of those not present any
adequate idea. So far for the transport of sick and
wounded. In our hospitals, what is the state of
improvement in affairs, which commissions, in-
quiries, and references to higher authorities tbr the
last two months, have educed? A Blank, my
Lord." Things are just as they were three months
ago—if possible a trifle worse. The medical staff,
insufficient as ever, are overworked as ever, and
the result is seen in the one case of recovery
out of sixty capital cases of a peculiar opera-
tion, against the one failure out of a similar num-
ber of similar cases in the French hospitals.
The deputy inspectors of one week are in-
valided, or exchanged, or removed in some way
or other the next; nobody has any responsibility,
nobody will accept it, as nobody is sare of
his place for twenty-four consecutive hours. The
consequences of such a want of system, induced
solely by the niggardly means which the Government
provided, are obvious. The hospital, fetid and
fevery, will require a hospital for the cure of its own
inmates. Typhus had alreadysshown, the patients
are dying at fifty and sixty a day, and the next thing

SATURDAY,

that we may prepare to hear is that, breaking out in
a malignant form, it has swept those poor, wan,
wssted heroes by hundreds, ay, by thousands, from
off their infected pallets. Of the state of the stores--
of which there are none on hand—of the purveyor's
department, of the cooking arrangements, of the
washing place, why waste words? They are bad as
bad can be conceived. Our men, coated with filth
and vermin, lie for days without a rag of clothin., on
them, because there is none in store ; their food, by
turns, is parboiled, or boilod to rags, or sent up
raw ; their washing is seldom done at. all, and theta
they lie, in filth, in misery, and in wretchedness, and
there they rot, and there they die. And the Ministers
at home are paying each other delicate complimeete,
and Mr. Smiler HERBERT gets up in the house and
tells us that Dr. Cummins is now appointed to the
head of the hospitals, and that every arrangement
for the beneficent care of the sick and wounded would
be fully carried out. liow often have we heard this
before from the same quarter ?