The Press.
London, England, 1855-01-20 00:00:00

SICKNESS, AND THE CARE OF THE SICK.

The Herald correspondent writes respecting the
sanitary condition and arrangements in the British
forces under date of the 30th ult. :—.

I am very sorry to say that the scurvy, with its attendant
dysentery, has rather increased since my last despatch. Al
the regimental surgeons are loud in their demands for
lemons or fresh vegetables of any kind ; and I need hardly
remark that they are not to be had. There is a great deal
of talk about establishing a depot for fresh vegetables and
and live stock, somewhere or other in the Sea of ➢larmora ;
but in the meantime our men are sickening and dying fast.
The actual returns of the mortality and sickness in different
regiments and brigades are kept very quiet, but still
enough transpires to show that our divisions will soon be
mere names, unless some stringent precautionary means
are adopted to prevent the spread of the disease and to
take better care of the survivors. .

On the subject of proper provision in the way of hospital-
ships being supplied for the unfortunate invalids, I wish to
offer a few suggestions, which I hope will not be allowed
to fall to the ground. It frequently happens that 1,000 or
1,500 men are sent in to Balaklava in one day for the pur-
pose of being sent down to Constantinople. In the majo-
rity of instances there are no particular ships told off for
their reception. They are merely put on board such
steamers and sailing-vessels as are nearest at hand. Most
of «hem are not able to discharge their cargoes for a week
or a fortnight after the reception of the sick. Some I have
known put on board vessels deeply laden with powder and
shells, which, from the precautions necessarily required in
disembarking so perilous a freight, have been in Balaklava
for three or four weeks before they were able to start for
Scutari. During all this time the men suffer from ineffi-
cient and improper accomodation, and from all the noise,
bustle, and confusion which naturally occur on board a
ship clearing out. The vessel never being intended for an
hospital-ship, everything goes wrong, and the poor men
and surgeons are the victims. But this is by mt means the
worst. Nearly all the sick men are suffering from F.:01 hullo
dysentery, and with that disease it would be oitile as fatal
to give the men arsenic as rations of salt pork and biscuit,
consequently the hospital stores of fresh meat and vege-
tables are all consumed in their support. This would be
no loss if we had a large supply at Balaklava; but we have
not. Yet, not unfrequently, a couple of thousand men have
to be fed out of these limited means for two, three, or four
weeks, when under a better system they would only re-
quire food for three days, i. e., the time occupied by their
passage to Scutari. As a natural result of this large and
unexpected drain on our small medical comforts, they often
fall abort, and the men who come iu afterwards go without
and die. Bat there is another reason almost as strong for
supplying hospital-ships specially appointed for the convey-
ance of wounded. After the victory of Alma, when such
ships were first sent down, they were supplied with hair-
mattresses and blankets for most of the sufferers ; bat
after landing them at Scutari the vessels went on govern-
ment business in all directions, and not five per cent. of
the mattresses were ever returned to store. Now we are
without them, and the sick men have merely their blankets
and the deck. I know even this is comfort to what they
endure in camp ; but for sick, and too often dying, men, it
seems but hard treatment to lay them ( for a stormy Pa'''
sage of forty hours) on the bare deck, with only a blanket
to cover them. The remedy for all these crying evils is
plain and simple ; let the Government send out proper
hospitadships, specially fitted and devoted to the transport
of sick and wounded. Such an arrangement would be a
far greater boon to our poor suffering men than all the
rubbish about yachts and old clothes, with which the
London journals are full.
The public may perhaps ask why should our medical
comforts and hospital store ever fall short? Simply be-
cause we have not a sufficient number of hospital purveyors.
When Wellington commanded 70,000 men in the Penin-
sula, he had twenty-one hospital purveyors and sixty clerks
in actual employment ; but for the whole of the British
troops now in the Crimea there is only one hospital pur-
veyor and three clerks, and there never were any more with
the espedition.
Let Government also cease to send out raw coffee beans.
The men throw them away, and in some parts the camp