"The clothing was not sufficient to protect the men on the northern
frontier, and even this short allowance failed to reach them in due
season."[64] "The woollen garments have not been issued until the warm
weather of summer commenced, when winter finds them either naked or clad
in their summer dresses, perishing with cold."[65]

The camps were sometimes in malarious districts. "At Fort George and the
vicinity, the troops were exposed to intense heat during the day and to
cold and chilly atmosphere at night." "The diseases consequent to this
exposure, typhus and intermittent fever, dysentery and diarrhoea," and
"but little more than half of the men were fit for duty."[66]

Gen. Scott wrote from Mexico, February 14, 1848: "The army is also
suffering from the want of necessary clothing. The new troops are as
destitute as the others. They were first told that they should find
abundant supplies at New Orleans, next at Vera Cruz, and finally
here."[67]

There is ever a danger of the sensibilities and perceptive faculties
becoming blunted by exposure to and familiarity with offensive effluvia.
"The General repeatedly called the attention of the officers at Fort
George to the filthy state and foul effluvia of their camp, but they
perceived no offensive odor; their olfactories had lost their acuteness,
and failed to warn them of the noisome gases that pervaded the
atmosphere."[68] If the officers fail of their duty as housekeepers to
see that everything in the camp and tents is clean and healthy, the men
fall into negligent habits, and become dirty and sick. It was the "total
want of good police" that reduced the regiment already referred to from
900 to 200 fit for duty. On the other hand, "The regiment of artillery,
always subject to correct discipline, with quarters and encampments
always in the best state, and the men mostly neat and clean, suffered
less by disease than any on the northern frontier. Their better health
may be much imputed to cleanliness."[69]

Itch and lice, the natural progeny of negligence and uncleanness, often
find their home in the army. Pringle, more than a hundred years ago,
said that "itch was the most general distemper among soldiers." Personal
and household vermin seem to have an instinctive apprehension of the
homes that are prepared for them, and flock to the families and
dwellings where washing and sweeping are not the paramount law and
unfailing habit. They are found in the houses and on the