In the beginning of a battle, I have observed _thirst_ to be a very common sensation among both officers and soldiers. It occurred where no exercise, or action of the body, could have excited it.
Many officers have informed me, that after the first onset in a battle, they felt a glow of heat, so universal as to be perceptible in both their ears. This was the case, in a particular manner, in the battle of Princeton, on the third of January, in the year 1777, on which day the weather was remarkably cold.
A veteran colonel of a New-England regiment, whom I visited at Princeton, and who was wounded in the hand at the battle of Monmouth, on the 28th of June, 1778 (a day in which the mercury stood at 90° of Fahrenheit's thermometer), after describing his situation at the time he received his wound, concluded his story by remarking, that "fighting was hot work on a cold day, but much more so on a warm day." The many instances which appeared after that memorable battle, of soldiers who were found among the slain without any marks of wounds or violence upon their bodies, were probably occasioned by the heat excited in the body, by the emotions of the mind, being added to that of the atmosphere.
Soldiers bore operations of every kind immediately _after_ a battle, with much more fortitude than they did at _any time_ afterwards.
The effects of the military life upon the human body come next to be considered under this head.
In another place[53] I have mentioned three cases of pulmonary consumption being perfectly cured by the diet and hardships of a camp life.
Doctor Blane, in his valuable observations on the diseases incident to seamen, ascribes the extraordinary healthiness of the British fleet in the month of April, 1782, to the effects produced on the spirit of the soldiers and seamen, by the victory obtained over the French fleet on the 12th of that month; and relates, upon the authority of Mr. Ives, an instance in the war between Great-Britain and the combined powers of France and Spain, in 1744, in which the scurvy, as well as other diseases, were checked by the prospect of a naval engagement.
The American army furnished an instance of the effects of victory upon the human mind, which may serve to establish the inferences from the facts related by Doctor Blane. The Philadelphia militia who joined the remains of General Washington's army, in December, 1776, and shared with them a few days afterwards in the capture of a large body of Hessians at Trenton, consisted of 1500 men, most of whom had been accustomed to the habits of a city life. These men slept in tents and barns, and sometimes in the open air during the usual colds of December and January; and yet there were but two instances of sickness, and only one of death, in that body of men in the course of nearly six weeks, in those winter months. This extraordinary healthiness of so great a number of men under such trying circumstances, can only be ascribed to the vigour infused into the human body by the victory of Trenton having produced insensibility to all the usual remote causes of diseases.