Doctor Urquhart was saying that the average mortality of soldiers in barracks was higher than that of any corresponding class of workingmen. He attributes this to want of space? cleanliness, fresh air, and good food.
“Also, to another cause, which you always find flourishing under such circumstances—drink. It is in a barracks just as in the courts and alleys of a large city—wherever you find people huddled together in foul air, ill smells, and general wretchedness—they drink. They cannot help it, it seems a natural necessity.”
“There, we have the Doctor on his hobby. Gee-up, Doctor!” cried Augustus. I wonder his friend stands his nonsense so good-humouredly.
“You know it is true, though, Treherne,” and he went on speaking to me. “In the Crimea, the great curse of our army was drink. Drink killed more of us than the Russians did. You should have seen what I have seen—the officer maddening himself with champagne at the mess-table—the private stealing out to a rum-store to booze secretly over his grog. The thing was obliged to be winked at, it was so common.”
“In hospital, too,” observed Captain Treherne gradually listening. “Don't you remember telling me there was not a week passed that you had not cases of death solely from, drinking?”
“And, even then, I could not stop it, nor keep the liquor outside the wards. I have come in and found drunken orderlies carousing with drunken patients: nay, more than once I have taken the brandy-bottle from under a dead man's pillow.”
“Ay, I remember,” said Augustus, looking grave.
Lisabel, who never likes his attention diverted from her charming self, cried saucily:—
“All very fine talking, Doctor,—but you shall not make me a teetotaller, nor Augustus neither, I hope.”
“I have not the slightest intention of the kind, I assure you: nor does there seem any necessity. Though, for those who have not the power to resist intoxication, it is much safer never to touch stimulants.”