THE TRUMP CARD

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2377, 5 February 1915, Page 6

THE TRUMP CARD

I: TYPHOIIKAND THE WAR INOCULATION I SIR WM. OSLER 1

Sir William; Oder, Kegiiis Professor if Medicine in the University of Oxv. ord, delivered an address entitled "The i V ¥ar and Typhoid Fever" before the :' Society of Tropical Medicine and HyL, {ieno on November 20. The address is • juoted in the "British Medical Journal." As an excuse for dealing very exhaustively with the subject, the emi- . lent authority pleaded its great import- : mce and pointed out that the medical .profession might prove tho nation's trump card in tho war by looking to the health of the troops. After a p. reference to the history of the scourge, > Sir William Osier described the <U.v ; covery of immunization as "the most ■ important point of all." For this dis- ;. covery we were (ho said) indebted to : the brilliant investigations of Sir AlrnToth Wright, and the net result of the ; enormous amount of 'work which bad been done since the publication of Ms ! first paper in 1896 was that, for a time ' at least, man might be immunized sa'e--1,7 and surely. Sir William next emphaL a'ised the extraordinary success of anti- • -typhoid inoculation in the United States 'Army and quoted statistics to support ' his statements. He then proceeded:— Fever in various forms.has proved -more destructive to armies in the field ; than powder and, shot. It has been ■ well said that bullets and bacilli are as ' 'Saul and David, "Saul .hath slain his "thousands and David his ten tihoui' sands." The story of the destructive ! , character of fevers .has never been so : 1 well demonstrated as in tho great Civil : '.War of the United States, during which i ixnalaria, dysentery, typhoid fover, and ! -zither diarrhoea! diseases were fclie fatal : joes.''Woodward's "Report of the Sie<iL' ical History : of the War of the Rebel- '' /lion" is a perfect storehouse of informa- ! jtion on camp diseases. It is not easy '■'Wo pick out the 'exact percentage of | typhoid fever, as a large proportion •diagnosed, as diarrhoea and -many of ■ malaria belong to this disease; but the -jfficial figures for tne army of the North ! are sufficiently appalling—79,4ss cases i and 29,336 deaths! There is the same I story m the Franco-Prussian War; - v-among tho German troops there were ; '8000 deaths from typhoid fever, 60 per i cent, of the total mortality! It is said • that typhoid fever existed in every i army corps at the outbreak of the war, i: and the campaigns were carried, on j. -laigely in infected regions. I have al- ' jeady referred to the terrible experience 1 in the Spanish-American War among the volunteer troops in the home camps. The sad memories of the South African ; War still haunt the memory. That was a war which brought out many new !• details in campaigning, but the sternest lesson taught is tho one we are now considering, as it, too, was a' war m : . B-hich the Dacilll couirted for more than j i,she men. -Of the -22,000 lives lost, the , .jnemy is debited,',with only 8000; pre- ' (Rentable febrile diseases for 14,000. And ' "imong these, as usual, typhoid -fever iieaded the list, 57.684 cases, of whom • 19,454 were invalided, and' 8022 died, i. fhe Bacillus typhosus alone did more damage than the Boers. Here again, as ! in the Spanish-American War,' it was ! : not so much water-borne typhoid as ■ camp infection by fingers, flies, dust, : ' and food. - r ■

j , We are now in tho fourth month of ! J the war, and, so far as one can gather rifrom'the somewhat meagre reports, the j i health of the troops at the front has j'; not been • damaged to any extent j '.fever, and, so fur, the sad losses have ; been, from bayonets and' bullets. ,'Ou j, (active service tho soldier, may take r- typhoid fever with him, or he. may f 5 find it in tlie tountry. A large body p. of men has a certain percentage of carI tiers, any one of whom may act as a c focus of distribution. The conditions I in. camp life are peculiarly favourable, to f caso. infection,; thus it would be imf possble for a carrier cook not to con- : taminate the. food of an entire company. Of equal moment is the stato of the country in which the troops are working. During the Spanish-American 1 War it was not possible in the United States to locate a camp in a typhoid- • free position In. this country it is not possible to pitch a camp in an infected ; district. In South Africa both condii tions prevailed; infection was brought i iy soldiers, and i was abundant in the ' country. It seems not unlikely that ■ the troops in France and Belgium are leaping the benefit of the past ten years : - of active campaign against typhoid fever. Details are not at hand_ as to the prevalence of the disease in the '*• eastern and north-eastern regions of France, but I am told that there has been & great reduction in the incidence of the disease in Belgium, and that the ;roops have heretofore suffered but •ittio. Tlio lthenish provinces should' reap tho benefit of the remarkable antityphoid campaign of the past ten years. I 5 Certainly it is very gratifying, particularly at this season of the year, that ; comparatively few cases have occurred, i Among 2000 German. English, and Beii gian troops who have been, or are at : present, in the base hospital at Oxford there have only been five cases of ty- ; phoid fever; and this, I believe, to be the experience in other large hospitals —throughout the oountry. It will be 'a ; I great triumph to go through this war a devastating experience of . ityphoid fever. In. the fighting line it is ■not possible always to ask the soldier to carry out sanitary precautions, and !• 'lit a very infected country, even with the best of intentions, bo cannot avoid * exposure. Here we may expect to find l the protective value of inoculation, and it is very satisfactory that the value of '' the measure has been so generally recognised by officers and men. An immense proportion of those who go with the Expeditionary Forces will have been protected —for a period at least. While with our present knowledge we cannot but regret that the inocu'ation has not been made-compulsory, let us hope that a sufficient number have taken advan- ; ita"o of tho procedure to make inpos- : igibie a repetition of tho enteric catastrophe in South Africa. In the midst of this great struggle we stand aghast at the carnage— at the sacrifice of so many lives in their prime— The many men so beautiful, And they all dead did lie. i 'The bitterness of it_ comes home every ; morning as we read in the Roll of Honour the names of tlie much loved sons , ' of dear friends. Strange that man who ; so dominates Nature has so departed from Nature as to be the only animal to wage relentless war on his own species. But there are wars and wars, and let our thought to-night be of the other army waging peaceful battles against our true foes. No one has so well contrasted the work of these two armies as the pnet laureate of the profession, Oliver Wendell Folmes: ' As Life's unebding column pours, ~ Two marshalled hosts are seen— Two armies on the trampled shores That Death flows black between. One marches to tho drum-beat's roll, Tho-wide-mouthi clarion s bray . And bears upon a crimson scroll, " • "Our glory is ts slay. • One ukwos in silence by the stream, With, sad yet watchful eyes. Calm as tlio patient planet s gloarn That walks tho -clouded skies. Along 1 its front no sa,bres shine, No Wooff-red pennons • wave; 1 Its banner bears tho single line, "Our duty is to save." ; ~ We shudder at the needless slaughter the brave young fellows —allies and foes alike—but think of the slaughter which ffpos on. in our homes, just as.

'cruel- as, often more cruel than, that of the battlefield! Tuberculosis alone will kill ten times as many this year in Groat Britain than will die abroad for their country. Comparing the deathrate ill England to-day with that of fifty years ago wo may say that, as a result of the work of the other army, more will bo saved "from death by enteric fever in 1914 than will be killed this year in the war. Eberth's "Bacillus Typhosus" will kill in-1914 in the United States more than will German shrapnel and bullets ill France and Russia. Moving in silence, the great army of. sanitation, with a general staff and leaders of all lands and languages, claims allegiance only to Humanity. In war it -has not often fought winning campaigns, but the new knowledge is full of such promise that even the vanqufshed may ho victors.