Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/204

160 THE WINTER TROUBLES. CHAP. VIII. Maladies ' recording ' the hard- ships en- dured by the French soldiers. Frost-bite. 6:urvy. who were eitlier killed, or who died from sickness or wounds or else disappeared, were 95,615.(2^) Of the myriads of invalided soldiery consigned to the French ambulances or hospitals, very many were stricken with maladies which recorded, if so one may speak, the hardsliips under which they had suffered ; and the numbers of men not only seized, but too often maimed, nay, too often killed, by frost-bite, bore witness to the sever- ity of the cold they had had to endure.(^^) And again. There is one sure disease which always becomes the Accuser — the implacable Accuser — of those who undertake, and yet fail, to provide such food for an army as may be fitted to sustain it in health. The scurvy raged; and the cause of scurvy is always one and the same — the want of appropriate food.(^^) It was in the navy of the French that the accusing dis- ease first appeared ; (^^) but it afterwards invaded their camps, and there, soon taking formidable proportions, seemed threatening to seize the whole army.(^2) In the month of February, 3000 of the French troops were afflicted with scurvy — with scurvy, disclosed by the tumours, the erosions of the gums, the sores, the discharges of blood, which at once make its presence appa- rent to any medical eye ; (^^) and during the two months that followed, there were received into the ambulances alone, without counting men brought into liospitals, nearly 1800 new patients, all afflicted with the same fell disease.(^'^) And although for a moment drawn on beyond the first winter campaign, we yet — being now on such