There is ever a danger of the sensibilities and perceptive faculties becoming blunted by exposure to and familiarity with offensive effluvia. "The General repeatedly called the attention of the officers at Fort George to the filthy state and foul effluvia of their camp, but they perceived no offensive odor; their olfactories had lost their acuteness, and failed to warn them of the noisome gases that pervaded the atmosphere."[68] If the officers fail of their duty as housekeepers to see that everything in the camp and tents is clean and healthy, the men fall into negligent habits, and become dirty and sick. It was the "total want of good police" that reduced the regiment already referred to from 900 to 200 fit for duty. On the other hand, "The regiment of artillery, always subject to correct discipline, with quarters and encampments always in the best state, and the men mostly neat and clean, suffered less by disease than any on the northern frontier. Their better health may be much imputed to cleanliness."[69] Itch and lice, the natural progeny of negligence and uncleanness, often find their home in the army. Pringle, more than a hundred years ago, said that "itch was the most general distemper among soldiers." Personal and household vermin seem to have an instinctive apprehension of the homes that are prepared for them, and flock to the families and dwellings where washing and sweeping are not the paramount law and unfailing habit. They are found in the houses and on the bodies of the filthy and negligent everywhere. They especially delight in living with those who rarely change their body-linen and bedding. They were carried into and established themselves in the new barracks of Camp Cameron in Cambridge, Massachusetts; but they are never found in the Boston House of Correction, which receives its recruits from the filthiest dens of iniquity, because the energetic master enforces thorough cleansing on every new-comer, and continues it so long as he remains.