Description
Autograph Letter Signed, to “My dear Bird”, thanking him for the photograph, saying he has just returned from the country. 2 pp. 7 x 4½ inches, in good condition. 6 Whitehall Yard, 5 June 1862. Uncommon. Henry Mapleton (1815-1879) M.D. served in the Crimea on Lord Raglan’s personal staff. In February 1855 Mapleton had sent home a “Report … relative to the sanitary condition of the army in the East” strongly condemning the hospitals and barracks, the defective drainage and privies, from all of which he predicts the rapid onset of epidemics of hospital gangrene, plague and typhus. He made a number of recommendations regarding the practice of drilling in the sun, modifications of clothing, food etc. none of which were followed up. The report was ordered to be produced before the House of Commons in June 1857. (Parliamentary Papers, 1957-58, xxxvii,105). On the reorganisation of the Army Medical Department, Mapleton was appointed head of the Medical Branch.