Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/203

 SUFFERINGS OF THE ARMIES. 159 reinforcements flowing out at this time to the chap. VIII East from France and Algeria. For, as often as L. any such troops came fresh and sound to the Bosphorus, tlieir arrival altered the ratio between sickness and health, as shown by the usual re- turns, yet effected of course no change in the bodily state of the men lying camped far away on the Chersonese.(2^) Eespecting the number of deaths that took place in hospital during the period selected for scrutiny, enquiry is baffled in part by the want of any monthly returns from the hospitals for the year 1854 ; and all we offlcially learn is the fact that in those seven months which extended from the 1st October to the end of April, there died in the ambulances alone 4901 men, whilst the deaths occurring in the hospitals during only the four last of these seven months were 6557 — thus bringing such of the deaths as have not been kept out of sight by the want of monthly I'eturns to the number of 11,458. Although left undistinguished by reference to the months in which they took place, the deaths occurring in hospital during the year 1854 were not so wholly forgotten as to be prevented from swelling the more general returns of mortality ; and perhaps it may hardly be wrong to follow them into the summary where the statist has merged them with many thousands of others. The summary states that the land-service troops sent out by France to the East, from the begin- ning of the war to its end, were 309,268, and that the losses sustained by the French in men