THE HEALTHIEST ARMY

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 283, 26 August 1919, Page 6

THE HEALTHIEST ARMY

HOW WAR DISEASES WERE FOUGHT .Trained in peace times in the principles ' (of hygiene 'the British Army proved to bo tho healthiest of all the armies engaged in tho war. This satisfactory statement was made at a recent meeting of the Research Defenco Society in London.

Sir Anthony Bowley, S'urgeon-in-Ordin-ary to tho King, in an address on "Experimental medicine and tho sick nnd wounded in tho war," said the British Army was the healthiest in this war, and that was to be attributed to the facts that the average Britisher was naturally a cleanly animal, that if you gave him a reasonable explanation of what you wanted him to do ho would understand and appreciate your objects and support and help you, and that the British Army had undoubtedly got in tho Army Medical Service a body of trained exports on hygieris unequalled in any othor country on this globe. (Cheers.) Owing to the efforts of tho Army Medical Service before tho war the British Army had been trained into mothods of hygiene—lectures had been given to the combatant officer, and every combatant officer hod been made the man among his own men for spreading hygienic principles and practice. This accounted for the very small amount of rick wastage. Tho hygiene of to-day was based on the experimental medicine of yesterday.

Enteric, Tetanus, and Dysentery, As regarded enteric fever, they had the terrible lesson of the South African War. They found people trying to explain away tho value of the prophylactic injection of serum, but he said it was to a great extent the cause of tho vast decrease in enteric in our Army. The French Army had no tiuio to nso the process when it wa.? called on to take the field, and the result was that between August 1 and April following there were as many cases of enteric in that Army as we had ill the whole of the South African War.

At the beginning of the war we had a truly terrible attack of tetanus among our wounded men. The need not having iheon. anticipated, there was uo proper supply of serum, and we had to get all wo could from America,'as tho so-called vivisection on a limited number of horses took time to produce it. Our uninooulated troops suffered in an appalling degree. But when the serum was obtained in good quantity the ratio of cases among our wounded was only one-sixth in November, 191-1, and only one-ninth in December of what it had teen in September. (Cheers.)

They had learned a great deal about gas gangrene, of which they had known very little, and they had discovered by actual experiment on British and American volunteers that trench fever was conveyed by lice. They therefore devised the simple plan of baking the clothes of the soldiers in Russian pits, thus getting rid of tho necessity of carrying about bulky stuff'. Here was a result of vivisection carried out on mankind, and afterwards tho trench t'ovcr returns went down by leaps and bounds. The first attack of dysentery appeared to originate from the German trenches on the Sommc. The treatment of tho baeiliary form by sorujn was very successful by separating coses into their proper groups. The investigations of Captin Wilson and Sir J. Hose Bradford resulting in the discovery during the war of filter-passing organisms bade fair to have a most important effect on tho treatment of most of the symotic diseases which had to he dealt with in civil life.