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.
64/280 page 50
![(58° to 60° Fahrenheit). Upon a visit, unannounced, I found the colonel, M. de Clonard, ]M-esiding at a distri- bution of oranges purchased for the scurvy patients; under a shed, I'counted thirty or forty barrels of wine, kept in reserve for days of great fatigue. Fields of barley, wheat, and potatoes had been sowed for the common supply, and they had even constructed, at the camp, a plough of the Dombasle fashion! The regi- mental band daily discoursed cheerful airs upon a beautiful esplanade, planted with trees by the soldiers, and adorned with a fine rustic cafe. Beyond the color- line there was a row of little stone buildings; the boxes that had contained the preserved vegetables fur- nished materials for the roofs, and even for stovepipes. These were the kitchens of the several companies. M. de Clonard had thus turned to account the thousand pair of hands of his regiment, when war gave them no further employment; had banished homesickness and diseases, introduced gaiety and health, and preserved his effective strength ahiiost entirely unimpaired. The English army passed the whole of the winter of 1856 in well closed barracks. Every morning, the boards upon which the soldiers lay, wei^e sprinkled, with fine sand, which was swept off at night; stoves of mine- ral coal Avere kept continually burning, which allowed of the ventilators being always open. Two temporary barracks served as reading-rooms, where there were books, benches, a table, pens, ink, and paper. The English soldiers burned the offal of their camps, while the French buried it. In winter, the heap of oftal burned with difficulty, and with a black, stinking smoke that spreads through the Avhole cantonment.* The materials for building, taken from the ruins of Sebastopol, having been divided equally between the English and the French, were then apportioned to the regiments. Without those, the army would have suf- fered cruelly during the winter of 1856. It was worth * The English reports show that their manure heaps were swept up, and, ou the whole, well burned. The most approved manner of burning was in kilns, made somewhat after the fashion of limo kilns.—Tk.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21951780_0064.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
