But it is satisfactory to know that great improvements have been made in this respect. From a careful and extended inquiry into the diseases of the army and their causes, it is manifest that they do not necessarily belong to the profession of war. Although sickness has been more prevalent, and death in consequence more frequent, in camps and military stations than in the dwellings of peace, this excess is not unavoidable, but may be mostly, if not entirely, prevented. Men are not more sick because they are soldiers and live apart from their homes, but because they are exposed to conditions or indulge in habits that would produce the same results in civil as in military life. Wherever civilians have fallen into these conditions and habits, they have suffered in the same way; and wherever the army has been redeemed from these, sickness and mortality have diminished, and the health and efficiency of the men have improved. Great Britain has made and is still making great and successful efforts to reform the sanitary condition of her army. The improvement in the health of the troops in the Crimea in 1856 and 1857 has already been described. The reduction of the annual rate of mortality caused by disease, from 1,142 to 13 in a thousand, in thirteen months, opened the eyes of the Government to the real state of matters in the army, and to their own connection with it. They saw that the excess of sickness and death among the troops had its origin in circumstances and conditions which they could control, and then they began to feel the responsibility resting upon them for the health and life of their soldiers. On further investigation, they discovered that soldiers in active service everywhere suffered more by sickness and death than civilians at home, and then they very naturally concluded that a similar application of sanitary measures and enforcement of the sanitary laws would be as advantageous to the health and life of the men at all other places as in the Crimea. A thorough reform was determined upon, and carried out with signal success in all the military stations at home and abroad. "The late Lord Herbert, first in a royal commission, then in a commission for carrying out its recommendations, and lastly as Secretary of State for War in Lord Palmerston's administration, neglecting the enjoyments which high rank and a splendid fortune placed at his command, devoted himself to the sanitary reform of the army."[75] He saw that the health of the soldiers was perilled more "by bad sanitary arrangements than by climate," and that these could be amended. "He had some courageous colleagues, among whom I must name as the foremost Florence Nightingale, who shares without diminishing his glory."[76] Both of these great sanitary reformers sacrificed themselves for the good of the suffering and perishing soldier. "Lord Herbert died at the age of fifty-one, broken down by work so entirely that his medical attendants hardly knew