MAKING THE ARMY HEALTHY

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 208, 22 May 1918, Page 7

MAKING THE ARMY HEALTHY

SIB ALFEBD KEOGH'B GREAT WORE. Sir Alfred Keogh, Director-General of tho Army Medical Services, has retired from that post, and has returned to Ins work ns General Executive Officer of tho.. Imperial College of Science and Tech* nology. In recognition of his services in connection with the wur ho hoe been made ii Companion of Honour. Hβ ie succeeded, as medical head of the Army by Colonel T. H. J. C. Goodwin, C.M.G., D'.S.O. At GO Sir Alfred Keogh is still the alert, keen, little Irish Army dootor who was selected by the committee which sat to reorganise the Army Medical Ser-.' vice after tho South. African War, firat aa deputy and then as Director-General. "In tlio jaet three years,"-lie said, "I have been more impressed by the willingness of the public and the profession to do everything I asked them than by anything else. I have boon refused nothing by man, woman, society, or organisation. There has been an ononuoue advance in science during the war. A lifetime of work and experience has been compressed into these three yeare. What has been done in tliis way will not be fully known until after tlie war. The medical profession has played its, part in the most noble and Gelf-sacrificing manner. I am delighted 1o be ftblo to' eay that tho spirit and kcenncES of medical nien is as great to-day as it was threo years ago." Sir Alfred Kcogh is an nutiring worker. Since tho war began he has never had n day's leave. For a long timo tie worked on Sundays and holidays. At eix o'clock one Saturday evening early in tho war he Tceeivcd a telegram stating that 6000 Belgians, wounded and sick, wcro arriving at Dover. By rapid work on the telephone ho succeeded in filling an ambulance train with 100 doctors and medical students, and a number of nurses, and by 9 p..m. they had left London ior ' Dover. When tho Germans mado their first gas attack on the French a telegram enmo from Paris asldn? i'or a chemist to bo sent at once. Sir Alfred Ejeogfc .> telegraphed back: "Try Corporal ; of the London Scottish," naming a man who had been his own chemical assistant aud was thon scrying in tho ranks. The corporal is now major, and has been engaged on gns work in Franco from that day. As soon as Sir Alfred Keogli was appointed Director-General ho started, to combat typhoid, that fell disease of armies, by sanitary measures. Thanks to him, tho British Army was the first in the world to teach tho combatant officer sanitation. At Aldershot he established tho School of Army Sanitation. Since the war ho has founded the Royal Army Medical College' at Millbank, London, from which has come a stream of new appliances and methods for dealing with disease. Other dieeaues have also Men conquered, and tho British Army is to-day the cleanest on record. In the Napolconio wars 97 per cent, of tho deaths were due to disease; in South Africa 63 per cent.; in the present war, i peri cent. Had wo experienced the same degree of typhoid in Franco as in South Africa we should have lost 500,000 lives. Sir Alfred methods have added this number of fit men to the service. ,„.,.„ Ho has seen the officers of thoR.A.M.C. increase from 1000 to 14,000; tho nursing 6taff from 453 to 8000, exclusive of 5000 untrained women helpers. He has placed consultants on every front men of the highest scientific attainments. 110 is the only man who has had the pluck to hand over the entire management of a. hospital to women. In August, 1914, he had retired from the post of DirectorGeneral, mid was actually taking a holiday in France, where ho remained as chief commissioner of the Red Cross. . sharing in the retreat from Mons, and learning at first hand the value of the voluntary work of tho Red Cross,' which exists," as ho has said, "to do what red tape prevents the Army from doing.