The herald., 1897-08-07
MORE DEADLY THAN BULLETS
Frightful Work Of Disease in the
Armies of the World

There is undoubtedly a. widespread
impression that, in time OF war, the
enemy Of the soldier is the man he goes
to fight. Even in the army this opinion
appears to prevail, and the inventor OF
a really practically bullet-proof dress
would be hailed with JOY by any nation,
though 1t is not on record that the mill
tary surgeon is treated with that mark
Of consideration. The truth is that what
decimates an army is not the bullet. but
the microbe In the fiercest wars of
modern times only one-fifth of the re-
corded deaths could be traced to the
fire of the enemy; the remaining 80
per cent were due to disease. Much
of the disease was caused, of course, by
wounds severe or slight; but small
wounds that are often fatal in the
crowded military camp would scarcely
disable a man in civil life.
Generally, when an army invades
new country 1t suffers heavily from dis
ease. And on army has such dieas-
trous tale - tell as our own, for it has
been our fortune to fight chiefly in coun-
tries where white men find 1t difficult to
live under the best circumstances, let
alone the circumstances of war. Malaria
is the worst enemy Of ALL Among tbs
troops in India forty deaths in one hum
dred are due to it. The French troops in
Algeria suffer even more, it being re-
sponsible for half of all the deaths there.
But even Algeria Is beaten by Florida,
where sixty United States soldiers die
from malaria to forty from all other
causes combined. So much more terrible
is this enemy than bullets or spears that,
in our own expedition up the Niger some
years ago, among IA white men there
were 1870 cases of malaria and forty
deaths. And a curious circumstance
was the fact that not a single negro of
the total of 1853 died from this cause.
Another great enemy in war is cold. In
the retreat from Moscow 1t was com
mon thing to find soldiers standing froz-
en- to death, with their muskets still in
their hands. Some years so, too, col
umn Of French troops was overtaken
by snow in Algiers ana in two days it
lost 2OS men. But it is not the cold alone
that kills soldiers. Very few polar ex-
plorers die of the extreme cold, while,
on the other hand, hundreds of thous-
ands died from it in the Crimea, al
though the thermometer was never very
low
AS an example of what heat can do, it
is recorded that during the Italian war
1000 men of one French division fell in
the ranks on July 4. An army suffers
more from heat than ordinary people,
being massed together, just is it suffers
more from cold through being badly fed.
Indeed, there is peculiar susceptibility
among crowds to heat; doctors call it
and it is especially
fatal to the infantry of an army
In addition to malaria, heat and cold,
the soldier is killed off by cholera, ty-
phoid fever and dysentery, and some fig
ures show what bad time he has had
among them all. The French army in the
Crimea numbered 900 men. OF these
the Russians killed 10000, while disease
claimed $4,000. In 1811-1S14 the English
army in Spain amounted to $4,000 men.
The enemy succeeded in killing 5000.
but disease carried off $4,000. During the
British expedition to Walcheren we lost
twenty men from disease to one from the
instruments of war. And in the san
culinary American civil war, while $1,000
were killed in battle, $4,000 died of their
wounds and 240, 900 Of disease. So that