ts, they have suffered in the same
way; and wherever the army has been redeemed from these, sickness and
mortality have diminished, and the health and efficiency of the men have
improved.

Great Britain has made and is still making great and successful efforts
to reform the sanitary condition of her army. The improvement in the
health of the troops in the Crimea in 1856 and 1857 has already been
described. The reduction of the annual rate of mortality caused by
disease, from 1,142 to 13 in a thousand, in thirteen months, opened the
eyes of the Government to the real state of matters in the army, and to
their own connection with it. They saw that the excess of sickness and
death among the troops had its origin in circumstances and conditions
which they could control, and then they began to feel the responsibility
resting upon them for the health and life of their soldiers. On further
investigation, they discovered that soldiers in active service
everywhere suffered more by sickness and death than civilians at home,
and then they very naturally concluded that a similar application of
sanitary measures and enforcement of the sanitary laws would be as
advantageous to the health and life of the men at all other places as in
the Crimea. A thorough reform was determined upon, and carried out with
signal success in all the military stations at home and abroad. "The
late Lord Herbert, first in a royal commission, then in a commission for
carrying out its recommendations, and lastly as Secretary of State for
War in Lord Palmerston's administration, neglecting the enjoyments which
high rank and a splendid fortune placed at his command, devoted himself
to the sanitary reform of the army."[75] He saw that the health of the
soldiers was perilled more "by bad sanitary arrangements than by
climate," and that these could be amended. "He had some courageous
colleagues, among whom I must name as the foremost Florence Nightingale,
who shares without diminishing his glory."[76] Both of these great
sanitary reformers sacrificed themselves for the good of the suffering
and perishing soldier. "Lord Herbert died at the age of fifty-one,
broken down by work so entirely that his medical attendants hardly knew
to what to attribute his death."[77] Although he probed the evil to the
very bottom, and boldly laid bare the time-honored abuses, neglects, and
ignorance of the natural laws, whence so much sickness had sprung to
waste the army, yet he "did