and when it is so guarded, the water corrupts from being stagnant. What happens when open to the natives, I really cannot describe. While the subsoil remains undrained, the wells must be foul from what dribbles into them, even when, as rarely happens, no dead creatures are thrown in from above. The river is considered the best resource of the three; and in remote country places, where it runs unobstructed, and well guarded from pollution, the water may be good: but such cases are rare. In populous places, we know how the Hindoos use their streams; and we cannot wonder if the soldiers themselves cannot resist the temptation to bathe.
Such water as there may be at any station is supplied by water carriers. Nothing in Miss Nightingale’s commentary is more striking than the cut which represents “Water Supply” for a country inhabited by 150,000,000 of our fellow-subjects, besides our own soldiery, civilians, and settlers. Water supply and cleansing are represented by two personages, the bheestie and the mehter. The former carries a skin of water over his shoulder; and the other bears a little broom in his hand, and a basket under his arm, while two vases stand at his feet.
Where such is the supply, the soldiers cannot or do not take care of their skins. If there is some little provision of baths, it is seldom that water can be spared for them. At some stations the lavatory is a room—generally the darkest and dampest—where iron basins are ranged on a stone shelf, where the men are tempted to be satisfied with washing face and hands till they can get a chance for a bathe. Yet there is plenty of pure water to be had if the means of getting it were provided. The Himalayas bear snows enough; the other mountain ranges send down streams enough; the rocks afford springs enough, to quench the thirst and cleanse the abodes of all India. But how can the wisest commanding officer give his men the benefit of it? He can only filter and ice the water that happens to be within his reach; and filtering and iceing do not get rid of the worst impurities of foul water. It requires the authority and the means of a Presidential Department to create channels for the pure water, and to guard them from pollution; and, till this is done, our soldiers will be more or less dirty in their persons and their barracks. Till drinking-fountains are provided at all stations they will be intemperate. Till this is done, in short, on a complete scale, till there is no longer unwholesome moisture in the soil, and plenty of the pure fluid in proper channels, our soldiers, who have cost the country 100l. each when they arrive in India, will be swept off by cholera, fever, and dysentery, in the vigour of their years. When this indispensable work is done, the next generation will scarcely believe that their fathers went on, year after year, raising fresh recruits by thousands, and burying most of them before they had well learned their business, so that the veteran soldiers in India of ten years’ standing amounted to less than a fourth of the force stationed there.
It requires a Council of Health officers, Military officers, and Engineers, to determine the proper situation for new stations, barracks, or camp. A seaside station sounds well; but Sir C. Trevelyan found an astounding mortality in one which was boasted of for its site. The sea-breeze was shut out, and the air within kept stagnant by a high wall without a break. He had the wall lowered six feet, and pierced with windows and a door, and the extra disease and death disappeared. Military authority may point to an upland high above the sea level, and ask what better site could be proposed; and the Health officer will reply that he must examine the spot before he can reply. He finds that the barracks are to be built in a slight hollow in the table-land, just depressed enough to receive the downflow of the neighbourhood, as in a basin. The case is not so bad as it was, the worst barracks being “burnt in the mutiny,” and some regard being paid to the advantage of high ground in the planning of new ones; but the thing can never be done wisely and well by military officers who select the ground for military reasons; or by civilian officials ignorant of sanitary science, any more than by sanitary officers ignorant of military requirements, and unaided by engineering advice. It needs a Commission in each Presidency, combining these elements, to place our troops where they may have a fair chance for their lives.
The same considerations apply to the case of Hospitals, which are at present “mere makeshifts.” It is heart-breaking to read of hospitals where men go, not to revive and recover, but to suffer and die, for want of precisely what a hospital should supply. “Means of washing—two earthenware pie-dishes,” or “one basin to 100 men,” on a form in a stinking room, “very chilly in damp weather;” “surgeons’ and nurses’ quarters a mile off, so that they spend their whole day in going backwards and forwards on the road.” Here a wall all round, so high that the place is stifling; and there the walls so damp that charcoal has to be burnt in the wards. Salt is burnt also, in corners whence an intolerable stench otherwise issues. Patients, whether they can or cannot sit up, have their meals served on their knees for a table, or go without. Convalescents from dysentery can only lie on their beds in a ward full of sick or dying patients in the same disease, till they are reported able to go out; and Miss Nightingale remarks on the vast proportion who are not convalescents, and never can be, under such circumstances. I might fill columns with such painful details; but in charity to my readers I will turn from the subject. It is plain that no Hospital System, worthy of the name, can exist under any authority short of one which is competent to institute a proper training for a body of nurses (regimental, or civil, or female nurses, according to the character of the hospital), and to erect buildings, and to organise the staff of management and attendance; and to provide for convalescents during their stage of recovery. The mere provision of food requires such an authority; for, as Miss Nightingale observes, the office of purveyor (which requires training) is necessary even at home.
“In England, where the grass-meat is so much better than in India, it is found necessary to put the purveying of meat for hospitals under the