The Crimean Campaign 1854-1856 : from sanitary disaster to sanitary success

• Main Author: Hinton, Michael Hugh
• Other Authors: Lambert, Andrew David ; Dandeker, Christopher
• Published: King's College London (University of London) 2017
• Subjects: 947
• Online Access: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.718528

The health of the British Army deteriorated catastrophically during the first winter of the Crimean campaign to create a Sanitary Disaster; but this tragedy did not persist and the way the situation evolved to the spectacular Sanitary Success evident during the last nine months of the campaign is the principal question addressed in this thesis. Emphasis is placed on the analysis of large numerical data sets of published and unpublished contemporary documents; and by considering events strictly in date order errors in interpretation associated with the knowledge of hindsight are avoided. The most notable conclusion made is that the mortality at Scutari from diseases such as continued fever, diarrhoea, dysentery, frostbite, pneumonia, scurvy, and typhus mirrored almost exactly what occurred in the Army as a whole. This is not surprising as most patients came from the Crimea and it suggests there is no justification in considering the hospitals in Scutari as a special case, and indeed the Army’s health problems were not solved there, as has been implied by commentators who have concentrated almost exclusively on events in the Barrack Hospital where Miss Nightingale was based, but principally in the Crimea where the Army was located. There were no notable advances in medical science during the campaign and there is little evidence to support the assertion of that the Sanitary Commission saved the Army, or indeed that their efforts were more than subsidiary. Rather, it was the progressive improvement in the standard of living of the troops by providing adequate food, clothing, fuel and shelter, coupled with improvements in health care in the camps and general hospitals in the Crimea, from early in 1855 which resulted in the Sanitary Success of 1856, and which Lord Panmure acknowledged when proposing a vote of thanks to the armed forces in the House of Lords after the ratification of the Peace Treaty.