The Daily Dispatch: October 4, 1861., [Electronic resource]

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Deaths from diseases in war.

--An intelligent British writer, referring to the fact that in all armies more men perish from disease than war, observes that what was so power fully said in the last century has remained in a great degree true in our own:

‘ "The life of a modern soldier is ill-represented by heroic fiction. War has means of destruction more formidable than the cannon and the sword. Of the thousands and ten thousands that perished in our late contests with France and Spain, a very small part ever felt the stroke of an enemy; the rest languished in tents and ships, amidst damps and putrefaction; pale, torpid, spiritless, and helpless; gasping and groaning, unpitied among men, made obdurate by long continuance of hopeless misery; and were at last whelmed in pits or heaved into the ocean, without notice or remembrance. By incommodious encampments and unwholesome stations, where courage is declass and enterprise impracticable, fleets are silently dispeopled, and armies sluggishly melted away."

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