The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-03 00:00:00

THERIIOIiETER.

This morning
This day at Two o'clock 73
Barometer-29.73.
wind—South; moderate.

14 -)°l4-
folet
eljg X4lll

LONDON, THURSDAY, SEPT. 3, 1863.

--s

As practically, as assiduously, as nobly, in her
own sick-chamber, here in England, as formerly in
the field, in the hospitals, and in the barracks of the
East, FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE still labours in the
cause of the British Soldier. Of this, the remark-
able folio Report, recently published by the Royal
Commission appointed to inquire into the Sanitary
Condition of the Army in India, affords the last and
the most signal attestation. It does so in the form
of a really beautiful and admirable paper comment-
ing upon that Report, a paper contributed by Miss
NIGHTINGALE expressly at the request of the Royal
Commissioners. It will be remembered, of course,
that until his noble and gentle heart was stricken
motionless by what appeared to us, his survivors, a
singularly premature death, in the very noon of his
distinguished and honourable career, the late
SIDNEY Lord HERBERT of LEE, presided over the
Royal Commission as its singularly well-selected
Chairman. When removed by death, Lord HERBERT
was sncceeded as Chairman of the Commission, it
will be also borne vividly in the popular recollection,
by one hardly less qualified to discharge the duties
of that office, one no less conspicuous among con-
temporary statesmen and administrators, than the
noble Lord the member for King's Lynn, formerly
in succession, during his father's last Premiership,
Secretary of State, first of all for the Colonies, and
afterwards for Hindostan. It is to Lord STANLEY,
consequently, that these observations of Miss
NIGHTINGALE have been addressed, to Lord STAN-
LEY, that is, as Chairman of the Royal Commission.
Prefixed to the ponderous folio volume of their own
Report, the Commissioners themselves have said,
by way of brief preface to this remarkable paper
penned by FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE, "We have
given an abstract of the Stational Reports, and
(Report Folio, p. v.) a valuable paper of comments
on those reports, contributed, at the request of the
Commission, by Miss NIGHTINGALE." Happily,
this paper from the hands of England's One Sister
of Charity is not simply buried away in the huge
folio report of the Commissioners. It has been
wisely and beneficently excerpted from those pages,
and has just now been issued in a separate form, as
a brief but substantial publication, accessible to all.*

That the remarks of Miss NIGHTINGALE have
been throughout this paper of hers most patiently
and profoundly well-considered, may be appreciated
upon a mere glance at the interval which elapsed
between the date of the rrquest (11th October,
1861) sent to her by the Royal Commission, and
the date affixed by her (21st November, 1862) to
the close of her elaborate communication in reply.
That is, upwards of a twelvemonth, during which
this patient Friend and Nurse of the British soldier
was musing over the facts furnished to her in the
Official reports, while yet those reports were in
manuscript, and—at intervals during her own
sufferings—penning, bit by bit, these thirteen chap-
ters or sections into which her running commen-
taries have been subdivided. Subdivided, thus,
probably for her own convenience in regard to the
thinking of them out systematically, quite as much
as with any view to the facilitation of labour on the
part of the reader in the way of reference. Section
the First is tpropoa to the evidence—evidence,
it may be
said, frightfully unanswerable of its
kind—demonstrative of the fact that Indian Camps
are peculiarly
subject to the Diseases of Camps—
besides hepatic diseases; cholera, fevers, diarrh cos,
dysentery. In the Second Section the humane
commenting upon critic, eon the only too demonstrable
fact that Indian Stations present the same Sanitary
1)::!ects as Camps, enumerates
follows the five
principal sources or causes of Camp Disease,
Bad Water, Bad Drainage, Filthy Bazaars,
Want
of Ventilation, and Surface Overcrowding
i
nbarrack
huts and sick wards. Commenting upon the bad-
nesse of the water, Miss NIGHTINGALE says; with
what one might almost call a fearful glimmer of
humour, '`Where tests have been used, the com-
position of the water reads like a very intricate
prescription." The swarming of animal life in it,
being in a manner as nothing compared with the
astounding varieties of chlorides, nitrates, sulphates,
and carbonates. A 3 to the badness of the drainage,
it is remarked that cesspits are spoken of by the
reports as though they were dressing rooms; the
severe and uncompromising analyst of these reports
observing that for Bad Drainage we might reed,
"No
a, Drainage whatever, in any sense in which we
inus•t vrstand drainage." Among the capital woodcut
'me, scattered, hero and there, among the
letterpress, may y be found, at p. 1,5, a graphic hint
as to what is often the sum total of the Indian

' A half-crown voluble, bound in
cloth,
and extending
over les:3 than ,i, hundred pages (8,70.,
pp.
92), printed by
Spottiswoode and Co., and published by Mr. Stanford, of
comprises w3t bin it the whole of the e deeply
Charing.cros..?,
inter ,t 4 tinf; and practically suggestiv© " Observations" by
iliss ..-N igl 1 t i regale, Not an officer in the British army
(esFecially in India) but sly:uld possess himself of a
copy
of it,