Among the cavalry, who, though perhaps not overwell ted, had yet no trench or night duty, it was 15 and among the artillery, who were well looked at'ter. and less worked, it was 18 per cent.; while among the officers, who, though equally exposed, had yet the means of obtaining better food and clothing, it was only lit. The trench duties had certainly most to do with the mortality, as its dependence on the length of time during which these duties had to be performed was very marked. will not repeat here details with which all are familiar. Sir A. Tull<>ch has entered into them at ih. In.la unary, tinsickness had attained its maximum; at that period, the number of those in hospital and at Scutari, exceeded the force fit for duty, s 12,025 sick to 11,367 effective.
I was always strongly convinced that the Bulgarian rampaig' -ed a great influence, not so much on the proclivity to disease, as on its fatality when formed. has been most dearly shown by l>r. William Aitkcn, in his interes at the period implied. That tin-H'! of injury and operation on these men showed how much their con;i'>n had sull'eivd during their residence in Hub I had often reason to obscr of the returns shows, that ''while the admissions to hospital were so much greater among the Crimean portion of the army, the deaths per cent, on these admissions were very much greater amongst the exBulgarian part;" and that while the Crimean portion suffered chiefly from enteric and scorbutic disease and cholera, the Bulgarian troops suffered from fevers and pulmonary diseases, which is just what might have been a priori expected.
The mortality on admissions from fever was nearly double from cholera, dysentery, scurvy, frost-bite, pulmonary disease, much higher among those troops who served in Bulgaria, than among those who were only in the Crimea. I cannot say how far the paludal poison of the swamps of Varna had to do in predisposing the troops who had imbibed it to fevers of a typhoid type. Dr. Aitken appears to give considerable weight to such a predisposition, and quotes the results of the Walcheren expedition as affording an analogous instance. There occurred several well-marked instances to prove, that many soldiers, even some who never had any of the symptoms of miasmatic poisoning when in Bulgaria, showed signs of such an invasion when reduced by wounds; and I had frequent occasion to remark, that the advent of purulent contamination bore in such men a more than usual resemblance to an attack of marsh fever.
That the subtle influence of this poison had been absorbed, and afterwards prejudicially affected many who did not at first show signs of its presence, cannot be doubted by those who had much opportunity of observing the progress of disease and of wounds in the Eastern army. There was an affection of the hands and feet very DISEASES OF THE ARMY. 7'. common during the first winter and spring in both the ish and French hospitals, and which Dr. Tholozan, with some of the Fivnch surgeons, was inclined to look up>n aa allied to a peculiar disease that appeared epidemically in i. the years ISi's and 1832, and th<-n termed acmdynia. t'eel persuaded that with us it was the product of cold and scurvy, and was perhaps a junction of rheumatism, or yet more probably of a ^ tage of frost-bite, with a weak circulation and a scorbutic taint.
This affection showed itself:!y in the pulpy parts of the feet and hands, but ially in the ball of the toes, in the edges of the feet, and in the muscular ridge which rims across the sole of the foot at the roots of the toes. Its earliest symptom was a prickly sni>ation experienced when the ut stood on the foot, and was variously described.em as resembling the pricking of pins, or as if they walked on nails. There were Lancinating pains in the s of the legs, which parts felt hard and brawny, and were sometimes swollen and discoloured. There was weariness in the limbs, and a most distressing heat in the feet, especially at night, when the weight of the lothes could not be borne.