ARMY SANITARY ADMINISTRATION,
AND
ITS REFORM UNDER THE LATE LORD HERBERT.
BY FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.
It has been well and truly said that, in long wars, the real arbiter of the destinies of nations is not the sword, but pestilence.
It is this destroying angel which, following on the march of armies, exacts of every man to the full whatever penalties follow on the infraction of natural law.
In times past, war has been conducted in more or less forgetfulness, sometimes in total oblivion, of the fact, that the soldier is a mortal man, subject to all the ills following on wet and cold, want of shelter, bad food, excessive fatigue, bad water, intemperate habits, and foul air.
And so the waste of human life, and the destruction of human health and happiness, have been, in all ages, many times greater from disease than from actual encounter in the field.
If peace has its victories as well as war, it has also its unnecessary losses from disease and death. Only the losses of peace are greater than those of war; because they are daily and constant, while war occurs at intervals of time.
To endeavour to prevent this destruction of life is by no means to encourage war, no more than to attend on the sick and wounded in a field hospital is to encourage war.
The object is primarily one of humanity. It is to save life, and to diminish suffering. And all who engage in this work are, in the best sense, savers of men.
Highest among such must be ranked Sidney Herbert.
As years pass on, so will the work, which he was a main agent in accomplishing, become better known and followed up.
And who can tell how much systematic attempts, made by all nations to diminish the horrors of this great curse, war, may not lead the way to its total disappearance from the earth?
The faithful records of all wars are records of preventible suffering, disease, and death. It is needless to illustrate this truth, for we all
