MEDICINE

While researching the Crimean War last week, I came up with the following statistics that I think are at once amazing and sobering. The war took place between 1853 and 1856. Here are the war's statistics.

The winning side included the French Empire and the British Empire for whom we have fairly good records. The French lost about 100,000 men. Of those, 10,000 were killed in action, 20,000 died of wounds and 70,000 because of disease. The British lost about 20,000 men. Of those, 2,000 were killed in action, 2,000 died of wounds and 16,000 because of disease. The losing Russians had statistics that included 130,000 dead; of this 25,000 were killed in action, 15,000 died of wounds and 90,000 because of disease.

As you can easily see, the big killer in the war was disease. The huge numbers of those dieing of disease was due to the inability of the armies to provide food and sanitary water to its troops as well as warm clothing and sanitary living conditions. We have learned a few things in the last 150 years.
:D