On military and camp hospitals, and the health of troops in the field : being the results of a commission to inspect the sanitary arrangements of the French Army, and incidentally of other armies in the Crimean War / by L. Baudens ; translated and annotated by Franklin B. Hough.
- Date:
- 1862
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On military and camp hospitals, and the health of troops in the field : being the results of a commission to inspect the sanitary arrangements of the French Army, and incidentally of other armies in the Crimean War / by L. Baudens ; translated and annotated by Franklin B. Hough. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![the road, here and there, with enormous trenches, to render another surprise more difficult. On their i)art, the Russians destroyed the bridge, to cover their retreat. At the foot of the mountain, from the top of which the Russian battalions were thrust by our soldiers, was a true ossuary, the bodies having been devoured by vultures, leaving the skeletons only of the men to a^vait burial. These skeletons had belonged to men whose stature was not great, but whose frames were remarka- bly firm; and the femur or tibia of a Russian, very easily distinguished him from a Frenchman or an Eng- lishman. The valley of the Tcherna'ia ascends towards the east, to the forest of Baidar, with an average breadth of about four hundred and fifty yards. Its air is sickly, and it was impossible to improve it in the whole course of the war.* From the tops of the hills which bordered the valley, the hostile camps were in view of each other, and after the taking of Sebastopol, some of the soldiers of the advanced posts established communications with one another, by means of white handkerchiefs fixed to the * The valley of the Tchernaia is thus described by Dr. Sutlierland, in the Report of the Sanitary Commission dispatched by the Briiisii Government to the seat of war in the East. To the north of tlie ridge, forming the northern margin of the basin [of Balaclava], lies the valley of Tchernaia. From the crest of the ridge the ground falls gradually to the foot of a chain of hills called 'Fedoukine Heights,' which rise rapidly to an elevation of 500 feet above the sea level. From their summits there is a rapid descent to the level of the Tchernaia. The valley through which the river flows is broad and tolerably flat. The bottom is chiefly of marl mixed with pebbles and clialky debris, and the bed of the river, which is only a few yards wide, and is scooped out of the debris to a depth of four to six feel. Most of the ground is perfectly firm in ordinary states of the weather, but as the river approaches the head of Sebas- topol harbor, the ground becomes a marsh. * * * The greatest breath of the valley, measured from its southern boundary ridge to the loot of Mackenzie's Heitihts, is about si.K miles, and the lengili of the wider part below Tchorgoun is about five and a quarter miles to lukerinaun Castle, where the precipices of the plateau approach those of Inkermann, and between them lies the marsh at tlie mouth of tlie river. The whole of the valley is covered with grass and flower-s, and there are uo trees except in the marsh.—Tr. 2*](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21951780_0031.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
