Are there Causes for Criticism in the Sanitary Management of the Late War?

Abstract

Tecumseh, Mich., Dec. 12, 1898. To the Editor: —That there are good grounds for criticising the sanitary management of military camps there is every reason to believe, but when one reads the editorial article in last week'sJournal(Dec. 10, 1888, p. 1425) comparing the sickness of the British Soudan forces with our own, he certainly finds the field of comparison a narrow one, because the elements for comparison scarcely exist. The principal fault found has not been so much from mismanagement of field-hospitals, either before a battle or immediately after, but from the gross mismanagement of the sanitary conditions of the soldiers in camp. Camp Thomas, Chickamauga was a veritable pesthole. Soldiers returning home on furlough bore the appearance of those who were so happy as to make their escape from Old Libby or Andersonville prisons of thirty-five years ago. The fault was not with Surgeon-General Sternberg, nor the