These were the worst cases; but other
ships also suffered heavily.
It is, perhaps, not generally remembered till what a very late
date armies and navies were more than decimated by disease. In
1810 the House of Commons affirmed by a resolution, concerning
the Walcheren Expedition: 'That on the 19th of August a malignant
disorder showed itself amongst H.M. troops; and that on the 8th
of September the number of sick amounted to upwards of 10,948
men. That of the army which embarked for service in the Scheldt
sixty officers and 3900 men, exclusive of those killed by the
enemy, had died before the 1st of February last.'
In a volume of 'Military, Medical, and Surgical Essays'[73] prepared
for the United States' Sanitary Commission, and edited by Dr.
Wm. A. Hammond, Surgeon-General of the U.S. Army, it is stated
that, in our Peninsular army, averaging a strength of 64,227
officers and men, the annual rate of mortality from the 25th
of December 1810 to the 25th of May 1813 was 10 per cent. of
the officers and 16 per cent. of the men. We may calculate from
this that some 25,000 officers and men died. There were 22-1/2
per cent., or over 14,000, 'constantly sick.' Out of 309,268
French soldiers sent to the Crimea in 1855-6, the number of killed
and those who died of wounds was 7500, the number who died of
disease was 61,700. At the same date navies also suffered. Dr.
Stilon Mends, in his life of his father,[74] Admiral Sir William
Mends, prints a letter in which the Admiral, speaking of the
cholera in the fleets at Varna, says: 'The mortality on board
the _Montebello_, _Ville_de_Paris_, _Valmy_ (French ships),
and _Britannia_ (British) has been terrible; the first lost 152
in three days, the second 120 in three days, the third 80 in ten
days, but the last lost 50 in one night and 10 the subsequent
day.
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