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

extracts from my official reports. In asking leave to make
use of these materials in their present shape, I do so in
the belief that the publication might still interest the
profession, and would, at all events, reveal facts and
figures which bear on political questions hitherto discussed
with very imperfect information. It is, moreover, a duty
and a privilege to vindicate the medical department of
the English army from the wrong done it throughout the
war by popular comparisons with French military surgeons
and hospital management, drawn always to the dispraise
of the former.

Dr. Bryce, in his opening pages, protests
against the censure heaped upon the British
and the extreme praise lavished on the French
authorities at the commencement of the
campaign, and apparently with good reason :

The sufferings of the British army and the deat'is from
sickness during the first five months of the war w-re, on
the instant, proclaimed with an ambitious fulness of de•
tails and severity of language that filled England with
mingled grief and indignation. France, on the contrary,
in camp and country alike, enforced silence of speech and
disuse of pens, other than official, concerning the real state
of her army. Hence her comparative exemption, at the
commencement of the campaign, from many of the evils
and hardshina endured by the English troops was through -
out Europe placed to the credit of her superior nrlitary
system. Few persons reflected that the present expedition
was, to the majority of the French troops, metely a change
of territory tram Algeria to the Crimes, whither they
transported their customary fighting weapons, habits, and
provisions, for the conduct of the war; and fewer critics
calculated the relation which service bore to ferength,
work to numbers, in the respective hosts. The French
medical organisation was especially recommended for our
install" adoption, on the assumption of its superiority,
because fewer deaths were reported in their ranks. And
yet the reasonableness of this assumption and the fallacy
of the inference are not less doubtful than was the advan-
tage conferred on the French army and the Emperor by
concealment of th.. fact that the sanitary state of Lis troops
soon became the very reverse of what was then represented
of it. It may, possibly, be still a moot question with some
whether the clamorous out-speaking of the English
press, or the imposed taciturnity of the French journals,
better promoted the general well-being of the two armies
in the earlier and later stages of the war. But I venture
to think that, after reading the disclosures about to be
made, no one will seek to aggravate our imputed medical
executive faults and administrative defects on the supposi-
tion that a frightful mortaliey from diseases was exclusively
the lot of the British army. It is not my province. nor do
I presume to be the apologist of the undeniable difficulties
experienced by the English regimental surgeon in the
winter of 1834, from defective supplies of drugs and sick
comforts, the consequence of stores missent or improperly
stowed on board ship. There is no doubt of the fact that
the medical department shared in the general unprepared•
ness and miscalculations that depended upon hurried
action following unripe deliberations, confused plans, and
divergent aims. But tolthe failure to make thistdepart-
ment the scapegoat for all the sins of all the chiefs and
councils at home and abroad, has succeeded the convic-
tion that no branch of the service, military or civil, die-
played higher intelligence and heroism, or answered calls
of duty more satisfactorily, than did the medical staff of
the British army, from the director-general to the acting
assistant-surgeon. How urgent these calls, how self-
sactificing was medical devotion to duty, are proveil by the
fact that a larger• proportion of surgeons lost their lives
during the war than of any other officers throughout the
army.

In order to understand the position sought to
he taken by Dr. Bryce, it must be remembered
that when the allied army landed •in the
Crimea, it consisted of 25,000 British and
23,000 French soldiers. Passing over the first
winter, and arriving at the termination of the
campaign by the capture of Sebastopol in '56,
we find the following as the number of British
troops despatched to the seat of war, the
number killed, &c., and the effective strength
of the army at the close of the war :

The total strength of th• British force of
soldiers, exclusive of officers, origin-
ally embarked for the East, and
added during progress of the war,
up to date of evacuation of Crimes ..
Reduced by deaths, killed in action,

93,959

and died of wounds
Ditt', from disease
Ditto, by invaliding
Remaining effective strength of Crimean
army, non-combatants exclusive, at
close of war
For the same period, and under almost similar
circumstances, and offering almost correlative
data, the ..Ifoniteur of October, '56, published a
report front the Minister of War containing
a similar return :

MOUVEMENT DES TROUPES.
DEPART.

33,647

Nombre des homilies embargoes en Fr mee 257,3'24
Nombre des homilies embargoes en Algerie 47.9•+4
Nombre des iIOMME embargoes en Corse 1,998
Nombre des hommes embargoes en Italie (divi-
sion d'occupation)

1,963

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