A letter on the sanitary condition of the troops in the neighborhood of Boston, addressed to his excellency the governor of Massachusetts / by S. G. Howe ; printed by request of the Advisory Committee.

  • Howe, S. G. (Samuel Gridley), 1801-1876.
Date:
1861
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter on the sanitary condition of the troops in the neighborhood of Boston, addressed to his excellency the governor of Massachusetts / by S. G. Howe ; printed by request of the Advisory Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    form an army, so it is to breed an epidemic ; and the processes for both are in active operation. The main object of these encampments should be two-fold—to train men by drill and manoeuvres, and to raise their physical powers to a maximum. The first is the duty of the officer, the second of the sanitarian; an actual though lamentable distinction, for a really good officer will be also a good sanitarian. The first duty is everywhere looked after ; the second is almost everywhere overlooked. It oiight not so to be. In training men for the ring we not only teach them to hit skilfully, but we at once put them on such diet and regimen as will increase their vital force and make them hit hard. In training soldiers, however, we submit them to such diet and regimen as must decrease their vital force. Who would think of training boxers on salt junk and lodging them in close rooms with foul air ? Yet this is what we are doing while training soldiers ; and it will tell in the coming campaign. There should be a very small percentage of kid glove in an army, We want muscular men who can march fast and far ; who can carry weight, and wheel guns, and use spades, and endure fatigue. In the southern array they have not merely ten but fifty per cent, of kid glove. But most of all we want men of abundant vital force, who can resist destructive agencies of all kinds ; among these are climatic influences ; and it will be found that strong, temperate, well- trained northern men will stand tropical heats better than southern men not so trained. In our encampments there are several things which tend to lower the vital force of recruits. The space allotted is too small, especially at night. A crowd is always unwholesome. Men want room. Packino- hu- man bodies closely together tends to breed disease. Hence comes the well known fact that epidemic army diseases resemble those engendered in closely packed quarters of large cities. But in no city, and no quarter of a city, perhaps, are people so closely packed as our soldiers are, or have recently been, at one of our camps, where accurate measurements show that the population was at the rate of over a million to a square mile. A thousand men were encamped on 20 460 square feet of ground. As a general thing, not only at the islands, but in the camps on the mainland, the men are too much crowded. This is especially true of their quarters by night. The able report of the British commissioners on the sanitary condition of the army