in service one hundred and forty days on an
average, and the twenty-four regiments which had the most sickness had
been in the field only one hundred and eleven days. The Actuary adds, in
explanation,--"The difference between the sickness of the older and
newer regiments is probably attributable, in part, to the constant
weeding out of the sickly by discharges from the service. The fact is
notorious, that medical inspection of recruits, on enlistment, has been,
as a rule, most imperfectly executed; and the city of Washington is
constantly thronged with invalids awaiting their discharge-papers, who
at the time of their enlistment were physically unfit for service."[45]
In addition to this, it must be remembered, that, although all recruits
are apparently perfect in form and free from disease when they enter the
army, yet there may be differences in constitutional force, which cannot
be detected by the most careful examiners. Some have more and some have
less power of endurance. But the military burden and the work of war are
arranged and determined for the strongest, and, of course, break down
the weak, who retire in disability or sink in death.

GENERAL VITAL DEPRESSION

Two causes of depression operate, to a considerable degree in peace and
to a very great degree in war, on the soldier, and reduce and sicken him
more than the civilian. His vital force is not so well sustained by
never-failing supplies of nutritious and digestible food and regular
nightly sleep, and his powers are more exhausted in hardships and
exposures, in excessive labors and want of due rest and protection
against cold and heat, storms and rains. Consequently the army suffers
mostly from diseases of depression,--those of the typhoid, adynamic, and
scorbutic types. McGrigor says, that, in the British army in the
Peninsula, of 176,007 cases treated and recorded by the surgeons, 68,894
were fevers, 23,203 diseases of the bowels, 12,167 ulcers, and 4,027
diseases of the lungs.[46] In the British hospitals in the Crimean War,
39 per cent. were cholera, dysentery, and diarrhoea, 19 per cent.
fevers, 1.2 per cent. scurvy, 8 per cent. diseases of the lungs, 8 per
cent. diseases of the skin, 3.3 per cent. rheumatism, 2.5 per cent.
diseases of the brain and nervous system, 1.4 per cent. frost-bite or
mortification produced by low vitality and chills, 13, or one in 12,000,
had sunstroke, 257 had the itch, and 68 per cent. of all were of the
zymotic class,[47