After a battle is over, the field of carnage is covered with the dead. I think it cannot be questioned that these are disposed of in a very careless manner in time of war; not only those who have been killed during an engagement, but also those who succumb to disease. After a great combat the slain are usually hastily interred in large trenches, in which they are arranged in tiers, or piled pell-mell upon each other, whereupon they are left to decompose. That no more calamity and sickness results from such a mode of burial, than is usually the case, is due, I believe, principally to the fact that great battles are generally fought on fields far from the habitations of man.

War, God knows, is bad enough, but far worse are the diseases that follow in its wake. The dead on the “field of honor,” which is soon naught but a vast cemetery, are, as I have said above, inhumed as rapidly as possible. There is no time to lose. Hurriedly thousands of fallen braves are thrown into large pits, and barely covered with earth. The comrades who have rendered them this last service move onward to bury others, and leave them to vitiate the air and to form a terrible herd of infection. Thus it is that a country which has already been devastated by war is again brought to the verge of despair by the appearance of 130typhus fever, dysentery, and other equally serious maladies. Unfortunately, these diseases do not confine themselves to the country in which the war has been waged, but also invade the lands of the peaceful neighbors.