know it. But it is only from our latest sorrow, the Crimean catastrophe, that dates the rise of army sanitary administration in this country.
Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the Army, 1857. The losses then incurred, and the experience derived from these, induced her Majesty to issue the now famous royal commission on the "Sanitary State of the Army," composed of men qualified to grapple with the whole subject, and to suggest the necessary remedies. Sidney Herbert presided over that commission, and embodied its results in a masterly report, shoeing, for the first time, the great and unnecessary mortality to which the army was at all times subject, the diseases occasioning it, their removable causes, and the administrative reforms required to arrest this awful loss of life and efficiency. At that time, the death rate among soldiers from consumption and tubercular diseases alone (the monstrous products of breathing foul air), exceeded the total death from all causes among the civil population of the corresponding ages. The total mortality in the army was nearly double—in the Guards more than double—that of the civil population. It is now actually less than in civil life.
Sidney Herbert's report laid the foundation of army sanitary reform. Lord Panmure, aware of its price, issued, under Sidney Herbert's advice, four sub-commissions for giving effect to its recommendations:—
Barrack and Hospital Improvement Commission, 1857. One, the Barrack and Hospital Improvement Commission, examined the barracks and military hospitals of the united kingdom, and found their sanitary condition as to overcrowding, want of ventilation, want of drainage, imperfect water supply, &c., sufficient to account for most of the excessive death rate from which the troops occupying them had suffered. These establishments have, under the direction of the commission, been provided with combined ventilation and warming, without machinery of any kind. Drainage has been introduced, or improved. Water supply has been extended, baths introduced both for barracks and hospitals, and the lavatory arrangements generally improved. The barrack kitchens have been completely remodelled; the wasteful cooking apparatus, only fit for boiling, has been replaced by improved and economical cooking ranges for roasting, &c., so that the men may now have the change of cookery required for health, instead of the eternal soup and boiled beef. Gas has been introduced into many barracks, instead of the couple of "dips," which only made the barrack room look darker still, and by the light of which it was impossible for the men to read, or to pursue any occupation except smoking. Many important structural alterations for increasing window light, circulating fresh air by removing useless partitions, for ventilating stables, abolishing ash-pits, &c., have been carried out. More simple and healthy principles for the construction of future barracks and hospitals, for ensuring better drainage, efficient ventilation, more cubic space for both sick and well, and greater facilities for administration and discipline, have been laid down, and applied in several new structures;—amongst others, in the great "Herbert Hospital" at Woolwich.
