The Crimean War : the British Army and Miss Nightingale / by Charles Shrimpton.

  • Shrimpton, Charles, 1815-
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Crimean War : the British Army and Miss Nightingale / by Charles Shrimpton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Almost all the French and Sardinian huts were built with mud plastered on branches of trees entwined on stakes driven into the ground. There was no flooring but the bare ground, which was always saturated with animal matter and fdth of every kind. These were very bad conditions for the soldiers’ repose and shelter; for the sick it was much worse. It was impossible to make these huts clean and fresh. They were built by choice on low ground; pits were often dug to receive them. All these precautions were taken from the unreasonable and mistaken fear of the effects of pure fresh air. Could anything be more uncomfortable and more unhealthy? The overcrowding existed in all the huts; and in the ambulances the men were packed together without any consideration for air and space. As the number of the sick in the French and Sardinian camps increased, they were necessarily more and more crowded together in these miserable ambulances. The number of sick in the French army during the last six months of the occu- pation rose to 73,422. Is not the agglomeration of this enormous number of sick in the few huts employed as ambulances a frightful example of overcrowding? As for ventilation, there was none; and with regard to ventilators in the roof, there was no idea of anything of the kind. There were three windows on one side of each hut, with a door, and a small window above it, at one end of the building. These doors and windows were always kept closed, and even if they were opened, the vitiated atmosphere could not be completely cleared out from the interior. As there was no means of introducing pure fresh air, it was impossible to renew the atmosphere of these huts, which consequently became more and more saturated with deadly miasmata. Such was the pernicious state of the atmosphere in all the huts; but i in the ambulances, where men suffering from Typhus