pital, to be under the orders of the medical officer; who, if he were fortunate enough to find one man fit to nurse a patient, was sure to lose him by his being recalled "to duty;" sometimes, indeed, men were mounted in rotation over sick in hospital as they would mount guard over a store. And this is still done in India, and in some regiments at home.
No special training was considered necessary; no one, except the medical officer, who was helpless, had the least idea that attendance on the sick is as much a special business as medical treatment.
Unsuccessful attempts had been made to organize a corps of orderlies, unconnected with regiments: the result was most unsatisfactory. Lord Herbert's committee proposed to constitute a corps—the members of which, for regimental purposes, are to be carefully selected by the commanding and medical officers—specially trained for their duties, and then attached permanently to the regimental hospital, from which they cannot be removed to the ranks, except for proved incapacity or breach of discipline. This was carried into effect shortly after his death.
Success of all these measures in reducing Army Death rate.
The crowning testimony of the great national importance of the new system of sanitary administration, inaugurated by Lord Herbert, is to be found in the last Chinese expedition, where his reforms were first practically tested. An expeditionary force was sent to the opposite side of the world, into a hostile country, notorious for its epidemic diseases. Every required arrangement for the preservation of health was made, with the result that the mortality of this force, including wounded, was little more than three per cent. per annum, while the "constantly sick" in hospital were about the same as at home. Let us contrast with this great success what happened during a former war in China. The 26th Cameronians, a "total abstinence" regiment, and one of the finest and most healthy in the British service, was landed at Chusan, 900 strong, and left to its fate without any sanitary care. In two months only twenty men could be got together.
To take another contrast upon a larger scale. During the first months of the Crimean war, from September 1854 to March 1855, the death rate among the British troops was sixty per cent. per annum, until means were taken to prevent this fearful sweep of death. During the same months, the "constantly sick" in the hospitals were sevenfold those in the war hospitals in China.
Indian Army Sanitary Commission, 1859.
Impressed with the enormous death rate and loss of efficiency in the Indian army. Lord Herbert undertook in 1859 the presidency of Commission, the Royal Commission on the "sanitary state" of that army, called together to devise means for reducing these great losses. He was obliged to relinquish this to Lord Stanley in 1861, on account of official business, and, alas! of failing health. But by that time the evidence received from Indian stations had been sufficient to convince him that removable causes, of far greater importance and intensity than any which have been discovered in our home stations, were destroying the lives of our soldiers, and the physical efficiency of the Indian army.
