Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1900-07-05
DIED By THOUSANDS.
Terrible Neglect Of the Sick In
British Army in South
Africa.
Burdett. Coutts Graph ically Describes
the Awful sufferings Of the
Soldiers.

Fever Patients in Charge Of Rough
Orderlies Hospital Facilities
Inadequate.
\ Correspondence of Associated Press.l
London. June 27.-Nrilliam L. Ash
mead Bartlett Burdett-Coutts, member
of parliament for Westminster, the
American husband of the baroness
Burdett-Coutts. yesterday exposed in
1 detail in the Times the inadequacy Of
the British hospital service in South
Africa and relates the intense suffer-
ing which has been caused thereby. In
part his letter is as follows:
.On that night Saturday, April 2s)5
1 hundreds Of men, to my knowledge.
We're lying in the worst stage Of ty-,
phoid With only a blanket and n thin.
waterproof sheet mot even the latter
for many Of thenD between their ach-
ling bodies and the hard ground, with
no milk and hardly any medicines,
without beds, stretchers, mattresses.
without linen of any kind, with only a
few ordinary private soldiers to act as
orderlies.' rough and utterly un-3
lstrained to nursing. and with only three
doctors to attend on $50 patients.
There was none Of the conditions OF
a forced march about this. II was a
mile from Bloemfontein. the capital Of
l. Inv tau tN,11 tr,h
had occupied for more than six weeks.
With a line Of railway to two seaports.
along which thousands of troops and
lcountless train loads of stores and
equipment OF all kinds and for every
one but the sick had been moving up
during the whole of that leisurely halt.
ing time.
4 About the same day convoy Of
4 wounded men We're being subjected to
nameless torture for want of any am.
bulance transport or the Simplest COM
lforts, huddled together in rough,
springless OK .sagons, jolted over sprust
and drift for forty miles, the road be-
ling strategically safe and their destina-
| ton this same Bloemfontcin.s provided
with most things except humane appli-.
ances for the wounded. These are two
|stypical instances of the state of things
here on April Is.
From morning to night the gloomy
\ professions followed each other across
1.-the market square a sloWsmarch. with
4 arms reversed, bearing shapeless fig
1 ures sewn up in blankets TO unknown
crowded graves in the cemetery on the
| southern hill. day after day and week
| after week in ever growing numbers.
How many of these might today be
|sstrong men. full Of life. rejoicing at the
1 near return to home and friends. Is a.
TERRIBLE speculation which must he left
| to those who consider the conditions
attending their sickness and death.
BY what incredible Ignorance Of the
current facts, by what bankruptcy Of
insurance against patent dangers We're
such funeral-baked meats permitted to
furnish forth that i'll timed feast at the
Reform Club. where the spirit OF con-.
gratuation filled the atmosphere. and
/ nothing was heard hut the eloquent
| and highly authoritative statements
| hat 1t would not be possible to have
1 anything more complete or better ar
| ranged than the medical service in this
4 war. The horrors Of these scenes, the
4 fortunes suffered by our wounded there
= -,
owing entirely to shortcomings of med
ical equipment staff and transport We're
a by-word in every mouth before the
;I8irst chapter closed.
$50 far8as the sick are concerned,
there have been two plaques in South
4 Africa-the plague of blindness and the
4 plague of whitewash. Whitewash can
! easily be got rid Of. but II allowed TO
remain it doubles the dangers of blind
4 ness when that superEenes. just as
i there was no 5quaver in the note of a b.
solute perfactibility about the past. so
5l#there was no warning as TO the future.
Already typhoid had opened her deadly
\ wings and spread them like some
i mighty vulture over march and camp
4 and field and town, from front to base.
But typhoid is the known 'scourge OF
4 South Africa The danger was always
j patent. Was il no ones duty to think.
i to warn. to prepare?"
Describing field hospital at Bloem-
/ fon.ein. Mr. Burdett-Coutts writes:
With no further equipment than two
Il marques and few bell tents. no adj
4 sdition Of staff or anything else. there
were 316 patients. OF whom half were
i typhoids. Their condition was almost
4 sleeping accommodations for six or
4 eight orderlies when working and in
/ sound health. In many of these tents
there vera ten typhoid cases, lying
A closely packed together, the dying
A against the convalescent, the man in
Ibis crisis pressed against the man
4 Fastening to it. There was not room
4 to step between them. Think of this.
You who know the kind of nursing ty-
phoid patient requires. With no beds or
mattresses and only forty-tsvo stretch
ers in the whole hospital, It followed
4 that PA patients had to be on the earth.
a There was a great scarcity Of blankets
4 and no patient could have more than
one, with waterproof sheet between
his body and the ground. The ground
is as hard as stone and at night the
temperature falls to the freezing point.
Besides other deficiencies there were
no sheets orapillow cases or pretense OF
! bed linen Of any kind; only the coarse
rug grated against the sensitive skin
burning with fever.
THE heat OF these tents in the mid