THE AMERICAN SICK LIST 399 surgeon attached to the army, dated from Siboney on July 17th, shows how serious the situation was on the very morrow of Toral's surrender, andhow difficult it would have been to prolong the siege. The report is a strong indictment of the mismanagement which produced such a state of things.

of the disease. Fortunately, General Miles arrived in the nick of time, and with him Colonel Greenleaf,chief surgeonof the armyin the field. Colonel Greenleaf made the same request of General Shafter for troops to aid him, but it was ignored as peremptorily as that of Major Lagarde. He now turned to General Miles, who placed at his disposal a wholeregiment of coloured troops. The work of sanitation was then takenearnestly inhand.

"In the present war with Spain," wrote Dr. Senn,"everyone knew that our army would be exposed to an unusual extent to disease and the debilitating effectof the tropical climate ofCuba. The invasion of theprovince of Santiago meant certain exposure to yellow fever infeccion. The commanding general must have been aware of this. It is said the seafaring men along the coast of Cuba dread Santiago more than anyother port. Yellow fever reigns there more or lessthroughout theentire year. . .. Iwasmore than astonished, when Iarrived at Siboney on July 7th, to find that thousands of refugeesfrom infected districts were permitted to enter the campsunmolested and tomingle freely with the soldiers. Houses andhuts in which yellow fever hadraged were visited freely,and the dangerous germsof the disease were inhaledas a matter of course. The results of such intimate association of our troops with the natives could be readily foreseen. It required only the usual time for the diseaseto makeits appearance, and when it didso it was not in a single place, but all along theline from ourentrenchments to Siboney.

" At present there are about 800 cases of yellow fever here. Fortunately the disease is of a mild type,the number of deaths beingfew."

Sickness increased rapidly during the inaction that followed the fall of Santiago. Typhoid and dysentery added to the ravages of yellow fever. The hospital arrangements had hopelessly broken down, and the sick men lay in hundreds on the wet ground, their clothes and blankets soaked with rain, without a change of clothing, without shelter, without proper food. One of the doctors sent by the Red Cross Society wrote how as he passed through the fever-stricken camps,in the first days of August, he heard on all sides from the soldiers appeals like this:" Do you know the President or the Secretary for War? Won't \ou tell him for God's sake to take us away from here ? We are worn out, broken down, and we never can get well till we get a breath of other air." These werethe touching entreaties of the brave menwho had so recklessly faced the enemy's fire at Caney andSan Juan. "Our isolationhospital was established a mile and a half from Siboney, andinless than three clays it contained more than a hundred yellow fever patients, among them General Duffield of Michigan. During my first visit to the front Ifound two hundred fever patients near the 1st Division hospital, most of them under sheltertents, others lying on the moist ground with nothing but a wetblanket to protect them.

Colonel Roosevelt addressed astrongletter of remonstrance to the general,urging that if the Government only knew how serious matters were, they would not delay. The transports that ought to have been moving the troops to the Atlantic coast were waiting idly to take unnecessary reinforcements to the Puerto Rico expedition. Meanwhile the men were dying in the camps round Santiago. "This," wrote velt," is not only terrible from the standpoint of the individual lives lost, but it means ruin from thestandpoint of the military efficiency of the flowerof the American army,for thegreat bulk of the regulars are here. The sick list, large thoughit is, exceeding4,000, affords but a faint idea of the debilitation of the army. Not 10 per cent, are fit for active work." Then came a still stronger remonstrance, signed by six of the generals,including Kent and Chaffee. " This army must be moved at once or perish," were the words in which they summed up the terrible urgency of the situation. At last the "Theappearanceofyellow fevercases insuch a short time, in suchlarge numbers,andoriginating in so many different localities simultaneously, proved a source of surprise and alarm to the medical officers. They realised the danger,and the necessity for the employment of the most energeticmeasures;but this could not be done without a hearty co-operation on the part of the generalin command. Major Lagarde applied to General Shafter for a company of infantry toaid him in fighting the disease. His request was promptly denied, upon the pretext that all the troops available were needed more at the front than in the rear. This action left the Major powerless in checking the extension