The results of the labours of the Sanitary Commissioners in the Crimea, although the application of their preventive science was an after-thought, and late, must have convinced the most sceptical of military men of its importance. It became one of the elements of the ultimately superior condition of the English part of the Allied army*.

How large a proportion of loss in the French force was due to the absence of neglect of preventive measures, we learn from the recent 'Relation Medicochirurgicale de la Campagne d'Orient' of M. Scrive, the head of the Medical Department of the French army during that campaign; and from the admirable paper on the same subject by Dr. Gavin Milroy, Member of the Sanitary Commission to the British Army in the East. To cite our neighbour's case, in which the organization of the land-service has a high repute, out of a force which averaged during a period of twenty months 104,000, upwards of 193,000 men were sent into hospital, i. e. at the rate of from 9000 to 10,000 per month. About one-fifth of these admissions were from wounds and mechanical injuries; the rest were from disease. The deaths in the hospitals at Constantinople amounted to 28,000; elsewhere, as in the camp and the field-ambulances, the deaths were 28,400, exclusive of 7500 slain in action. Of the 28,400 deaths under treatment, about 4000, or a seventh part of the whole, arose from gun-shot wounds and accidents, the other six-sevenths being the result of disease. The official returns give a total loss from all causes during the whole Crimean campaign of 70,000: it is believed to have exceeded that figure by 10,000. 65,000 men, out of 309,268, sent from France and Algeria, were invalided in consequence of disablement from wounds or the effect of disease.

Dr. Scrive points out that, if the buildings at Gallipoli had been inspected and made fit for the purpose before they were occupied as an hospital, a regiment of active young soldiers might have been saved.

At Varna, a Turkish barrack within the walls was prematurely occupied as an hospital: it had to be abandoned after great loss of life. Fewer men fell in the unsuccessful attack upon the Malakoff on the 18th of June than succumbed in the rash attempt to use, as an hospital, a place which had not been previously fitted for one. And the time and labour required by the Sanitary Inspector to effect their fitness are as nothing compared with the preliminary approaches to the Malakoff, and with the delay and impediments caused by the prostration of a large proportion of effective force by disease.

Without consulting the medical staff, it was determined to move from Varna to the notoriously malarial region on the south of the Danube, called the Dobrudscha. On the 20th of July the first division of the army moved from Varna; on the 26th the cholera broke out. Hundreds of men were struck down at once, and died within a few hours after being seized: in one regiment 300 men were attacked within twenty-four hours, and most of them died on the spot. Appalled by the blow, the commanding officer retreated, as from before an overwhelming force; but, ere he could reach the healthier locality, one-third of the division had perished, and numbers reached the coast only to expire on the beach.

No enemy had been encountered save that one, of whose power and presence sanitary science had in vain forewarned the commander. On the return of the first division to Varna, a force of 12,000 had been reduced to 7000; the victims including two general officers and seven medical officers.

Not to weary by other special instances of the effect of neglecting preventive preparatory sanitary measures, I may sum up by the statement that one pestilence, in the marshes of the Danube, within two months, out of an army 55,000 strong, and before a shot had been fired, had destroyed as many men as were slain by the enemy in the field during the twelve months from the landing in the Crimea to the capture of Sebastopol, and when the army averaged double the above number of men.

That this pestilence, or its fatal effects, might have been, in an important degree, prevented by practicable applications of sanitary science is the conviction of the ablest medical officers of the French and English armies; and this conviction was substantiated by the results of the Sanitary Commission which operated in the English lines before Sebastopol. These authorities concur in the conclusion that three-fourths of the losses of an army in the field are not from the enemy or from unavoidable casualties of service, "but from diseases which are more or less under control." "Of these," writes Dr. Milroy, "typhus and scurvy are two of the most formidable, and the most easily preventible. They are the inevitable products of certain well-ascertained conditions, and they may be generated at will as surely as any salt or other compound may be formed by the chemist in his laboratory.

And yet it was these very evils which but two years ago brought the noble army of a mighty nation, at the close, too, of a glorious campaign, to almost the verge of destruction."

I may allude to one other point which sanitary science would suggest to the administrator in reference to the clearly-ascertained effects of too little pure air, and too much foul air inspired continuously during a given period.

The skilled soldier being of a given value when landed healthy and strong in the Crimea or at Calcutta, query, whether it be more economical to carry 1000 in one ship, landing 500 sick, enfeebled, and prepared to fall into and engender epidemics, or to carry the 1000 in two such ships, and land them healthy and fit for action? The same administrative question applies to barracks and hospitals.

One noble use and adequate application of so vast a triumph of naval architecture as Mr. Scott Russell's 'Leviathan' would be its carrying troops in good condition as regards health, for which its capacity especially fits it. When authority becomes impressed with a conviction stimulating to action of the importance of sanitary science, it will insist on the possession, by the army medical officers, of the elements of that science as well as of the principles of practice in the cases of disease and the treatment of wounds. But, in order that an army may benefit by the doctors' knowledge of preventive medicine, authority should direct preliminary examinations and reports of sites for encampment,-of buildings for barracks and hospitals,-of clothes for extreme climates, and the like, and should command that such reports be acted upon, where no urgent circumstances or inevitable movements preclude the adoption of the means for the prevention of decimating fevers and choleras.

Bonaparte's military science was characterized by the rapid concentration of his forces upon a given point. A like success and superiority may attend the commander who keeps the greatest proportion of his men in good working trim. The healthier the man the longer and quicker will he march. And the care which foresees and provides for the efficient fighting order of a force is quite compatible with the most intrepid handling of that force in the field of battle.

As to the dense populations in civil life, the number of towns in England in which the sewage is rapidly, efficiently, and economically carried off by water-power and hydraulic apparatus, constitute so many experimental demonstrations of the success attending a proper unintermitting water-supply and co-adjusted system of tubular drainage. Lancaster, Penrith, Alnwick, Barnard Castle, Rugby, Croydon, Ely, are instances in which are demonstrated the diminution of fever and other causes of untimely death,-the augmentation of the cleanliness and comfort of the wage-classes, the economy in the wear of all washable articles through the supplies of pure water, -collateral and unexpected economies in regard to fire-insurance, from the power of rapid extinction of conflagration which the unintermitting system affords, the purity of the atmosphere in formerly fœtid courts and alleys,these and other inestimable material advantages have resulted, and will result with progressively increased benefit as time goes on.

Lord Bacon observes, in his suggestions for an inquiry into the causes of death," And this inquiry, we hope, might redound to a general good, if physicians would but exert themselves and raise their minds above the sordid considerations of cure; not deriving their honour from the necessities of mankind, but becoming ministers to the Divine power and goodness both in prolonging and restoring the life of man; especially as this may be effected by safe, commodious, and not illiberal means, though hitherto unattempted. And certainly it would be an earnest of Divine favour, if, whilst we are journeying to the land of promise, our garments, these frail bodies of ours, were not greatly to wear out in the wilderness of this world."

Amongst his special topics of inquiry are these :

"Inquire into the length and shortness of men's lives according to the times, countries, climates, and places in which they were born and lived." "Inquire into the length and shortness of men's lives according to their food, diet, manner of living, exercise, and the like. With regard to the air in which they live and dwell, I consider that ought to be inquired into under the former article concerning their places of abode."

Now these inquiries have in our times been made chiefly in the form and by the authority of Sanitary Commissions; in the successful working of which the name of EDWIN CHADWICK stands foremost.

By these commissions it has been shown, as a general result, that nearly one-half the prevalent diseases are due to one or other form of atmospheric impurity; impurity from decomposing fæcal or animal and vegetable matter, within and without human habitations, and beneath the sites of towns, and atmospheric impurity from over-crowding.

For the prevention of the diseases arising from these causes, the sanitary physician must direct his requisitions not to the apothecary, but to the professor of new arts, which are only partially created, -the art of the sanitary architect and the art of the sanitary engineer. The latter has already been officially shown how he may collect water from natural and artificial springs, convey it into houses unintermittingly fresh, and without stagnation, and by its means remove from houses, through self-cleansing drains and self-cleansing sewers, constantly and before noxious decomposition can commence, all fæcal and waste animal and vegetable matter.

In model dwellings, where the sanitary conditions have been as yet applied only in a rudimentary manner, the death-rate has, in fact, been steadily kept down to thirteen in a thousand, or much less than one-half that which prevailed in London when Bacon lived, or little more than one-half of the death-rate which prevails there now. In fact, it is proved to be practicable to make those garments-the frail bodies of the population-last full ten years, or probably one-third longer, in the wilderness of this world.

In our time physicians have ably exerted themselves in aid of the sanitary engineer and administrator. Their general sentiments have been long expressed in such terms as those of Dr. Willis of Kelso:- " It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that much more might still be accomplished could we be induced to profit by a gradually extending knowledge, so as to found upon it a more wisely directed practice. When man shall be brought to acknowledge (as truth must finally constrain him to acknowledge) that it is by his own hand, through his neglect of a few obvious rules, that the seeds of disease are most lavishly sown within his frame, and diffused over communities; when he shall have required of medical science to occupy itself rather with the prevention of maladies than with their cure; when governments shall be induced to consider the preservation of a nation's health an object as important as the promotion of its commerce or the maintenance of its conquests, we may hope then to see the approach of those times when, after a life spent almost without sickness, we shall close the term of an unharassed existence by a peaceful euthanasia."

It is to the landlord, -to the representative landlords and owners of habitations, in parliament, to whom exhortations are now required to be addressed, to raise their minds above "the sordid considerations" of the expenses of cure, that is, of the expenses of those sanitary works of combined drainage and water-supply, which it is their province to provide.

It is right, however, to state that advances in well-directed practical applications of sanitary science are advances in economy; that two houses and two towns may receive constant supplies of water at the expense formerly incurred for supplying one on the intermittent system, with its stagnancy and pollutions in house cisterns and large storage reservoirs. It remains for the legislature and local administrations to make prevalent that which is proved to be practicable for the public good, and to ensure that good at the economical rate at which particular instances afford demonstrations that it is achievable.

Agriculture has of late years made unusual progress in this country, and much of that progress is due to the application of scientific principles; chiefly of those supplied by chemistry, in a less degree of zoology and physiology: some minor help in regard to the more effectual abatement of noxious insects has been had from entomology; recent discoveries of the metamorphoses, metagenesis, and the course and modes of transmission of internal parasites, have afforded a rational explanation of some traditional precautionary rules of herdsmen, in reference to the 'rot' in sheep, from fluke-worms and hydatids; and more direct power of preventing epizootics will doubtless be obtained from entozoology.

Geology now teaches the precise nature and relations of soils, a knowledge of great practical importance in guiding the drainer of land in the modifi