Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/160

 month to month for terms of peace, yet doomed to prolonged uncertainty. All standing camps become unhealthy generally from neglect in the conservancy department. The excitement that kept all well during active service,is now followed by its collapse; suspense becomes burdensome; the soldier's mind rusts like the sword in the scabbard, for want of exercise. Keeping it cheerful and healthy becomes burdensome, and a task that he neglects. "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick;" men's minds become morbid; the body sympathises with the mind, and in its turn becomes predisposed to disease and Cholera, Dysentery or Fever becoming epidemic, may, in a few weeks, decimate the force. During eighteen months' continuance of the late Burmese war, the European troops were decimated three times, a rate of mortality equal to that of the Crimea.

14. EXPOSURE OF SURGEONS.—A prevailing opinion exists that the medical officers in action are never exposed to the fire of the enemy, This is a great mistake; for in the returns of every battle, their names will be found in the lists of killed or wounded. I myself have on different occasions seen men killed and wounded. within a few yards of me; and at the capture of the Great Pagoda of Rangoon, two of my party standing round me, were wounded by musketry, whilst I was performing an amputation; yet,