But the hospitals were of little value if there were not able physicians[99] and antiseptics and anaesthetics were almost unknown. Besides the lack of skill and proper medicine and instruments, for some of the instruments described are almost unconceivable, there was a lack of cleanliness in conducting the operations for that was not insisted upon then as it is today.[100] Of hospital methods Dr. Waldo wrote December 25, 1777, "But we treat them differently from what they used to be at home under the inspection of old women and Doct ----, We give them mutton and Grogg and avoid pudding, pills, and powders."[101] This perhaps was a little extreme, but it at least reflects the conditions. Thacher described the awful condition in which soldiers came to the hospital with wounds covered with putrified blood and full of magots which were destroyed by the application of tincture of myrrh.[102] Director-General Shippen, in explaining the causes of the mortality among the soldiers attributed it to; "The want of clothing and covering necessary to keep the soldiers clean and warm, articles at that time not procurable in the country;—partly from an army being composed of raw men, unused to camp life and undisciplined; exposed to great hardships and from the sick and wounded being removed great distances in open wagons."[103] As to the kind of disease most prevalent and the number in the hospitals because of sickness in proportion to those there because of injuries, some idea can be formed from the hospital reports sent in weekly from the departmental hospitals. Although some of the diseases listed in the reports are unknown to us now and there is no way of knowing what the proportion the sick was of the entire army in that section. However, the returns do state the number sick during the various seasons, and show in which season of the year there was the most sickness. The following are the returns from the Sunbury hospital for the four seasons of the year, spring, summer, fall and winter. _March 6 to 13, 1780_ "Wounded 4 Dysenteria 1 Diorrhoea 0 Rheumatism 2 Ophthalmia 1 Asthma 1 Ulcers 1 --- Total 10"[104] _July 13 to September 22 1779_ "Pleurisy 0 Peripneumony 2 Angina 1 Rheumatism 14 Bilious fever 8 Intermitting fever 0 Putrid fever 0 Dysentery 19 Dyarrhea 11 Gravel 12 Cough and Consumpt. 4 Hernia 5 Lues 14 Epilepsy 2 Itch 2 Ulcers 9 Wounded 33 --- Total 126"[105] _November 1 to 7 1779_