An Age of Reform 373
it may have mattered more that soldiers now had a better chance of receiving
their deserts. In the supply field de~ent1aliaiio1i ~ould p1 udul:t: langibie resuhs,
since the officials at district level were in closer touch with suppliers. They were
now given greater latitude in purchasing provisions; the central authorities con-
tinued to draw up long-term contracts with reliable civilian merchants, but did so
mainly to meet the needs of troops stationed in grain-deficient regions.11s
There was also an improvement, though not a dramatic one, in the provision
of medical aid. Milyutin placed military hospitals under the army's chief
medical authorities, which could be expected to take a more professional attitude
than commissariat officials; within each hospital, too, doctors were given more
power vis-a-vis administrators. The average size of these establishments was
reduced, which made them more manageable, and they were relocated so as to
share out resources between different regions more equitably. A reserve of staff
and equipment was built up in readiness for future emergencies. In lazarety the
amount of money spent per patient more than quadrupled, whereas in military
hospitals it rose by only a quarter; in this fashion the gap, without any publicity,
was narrowed between officers and men.^119 At the lowest level a network of
medical posts (okolotk1) was established which by 1870 catered for half the
total number of cases treated. The capacity of the lazarety increased, and so
did the ratio of doctors to potential patients: from 1 :474 in 1861 to 1 :367 ten
years later.^120 But the War Ministry's zealous statisticians obscured the fact
that the total number of medical personnel grew by only 5 per cent, and that
there were twice as many orderlies (jel'dshery) as there were doctors.
Graduates from civilian medical schools still found army life unattractive. The
Medical-Surgical Academy greatly improved its teaching and nearly doubled
its annual number bf:graduates (the average for the nine years 1862-71 was
129): By 1867 its student body passed the one-thousand mark; however, 40 per
cent of the students left before they had completed the course.^121
In 1868- 70 the average mortality rate among serving soldiers (including
reservists) was l.92 per cent-considerably lower than it was for under-
privileged civilians, and probably below what it had been at the start of the
decade.Ill Hospital mortality rates, at 39.1 per thousand in 1868-70, were
actually higher than in the 1840s, but this reflected the fact that more serious
cases were now admitted for treatment instead of being written off as incur-
able. Both 1864 and 1866 were bad years for the troops' health, the medical
111 VOVM 186', p. 22; Bogdanovich, /st. ocherk, iv. 148-52, 155, 162-3..
119 Bogdanovich, op. cit., iv. 385, 394, 445-7 (respectively from 7\4 to 32 and from 45 to 53
kopecks per man per day).
120 II PSZ xxxiv. 34935 (9 Oct. 1859); S. I. Yezersky, in SVMiii (ii), 104; VOVM 1861, p. 222;
for number of effectives ibid. pp. 1-4; Bogdanovich, /st. ocherk, iii. app. 38.
121 Bogdanovich, op. cit., iv. 427-9; for slightly different figures: Frieden, Russian Physicians,
p. 39, and for the improvements pp. 56-7.
122 From Bogdanovich's appendices 38 and 71 ii can be seen that in 1862-4 2.01 per cent of
effectives died, but since these earlier data included non-serving Cossacks they are not ellactly
comparable.