Page:The present and general condition of sanitary science.djvu/13

7 refer to the latest manifestation of the power of our science for the maintenance of the force of our army. At the Congress of Social Science, held at Liverpool in October 1858, I proposed that the science which had saved the second army in the Crimea should be applied to the protection of our excessively death-rated army in India, and after much persistent labour of representation, a Commission of Army Sanitary Inquiry was appointed at the instance of Lord Stanley, now the Earl of Derby, in May 1859, and the change which has since taken place is surprising even to stolid minds. The old death-rate in the Indian army was sixty-seven in a thousand. In the last decade it has been reduced to twenty in a thousand. The saving of life in India in that decade was in men 28,130, in sickness 25,000. This was affirmed, on examination, by Sir Louis Mallet on a claim for due recognitions, when he was Secretary to the India Board. The services of the Army Sanitary Commission, which comprised those of Dr. John Sutherland and of Sir Robert Rawlinson—the remaining officers of the Crimean Sanitary Commission—were extended over the whole army, and the aggregate saving of life, as returned by the late lamented Professor de Chaumont, of the Army Statistical Department of Netley, has been 4,058 men per annum, and for the decade 40,500 men; or in money, at £100 per man, £40,053; and in sickness £41,680, an equivalent sum at £100 per man. The saving in life by sanitation is immensely greater than the losses of life by war.

At this time a further reduction has been made from the 26 per 1,000 of the last decade to about 14 per 1,000, and further advances may yet be made in the sanitation of the Indian army. A strong party has been formed in India to obtain the application of the experiences of the successful sanitation in the army to the relief of the civil population of India, and moreover to apply those experiences to large tracts of unoccupied but fertile land, capable of permanent military settlement or of the civil settlements of a population much greater than the present population of all India. My aid by exposition of sanitary and administrative principle has been besought for this movement.

So much for our own Empire, but a still greater advance in army sanitation has been made in the German army, where the death-rate has been reduced to six, and even to five, in a