How far inoculation against typhoid has prevented the disease is also an interesting question. The doctors have a note of victory in all their statements on this subject, and the figures seem to justify their satisfaction.
Certainly preventive measures have counted for much. Early in the war the medical officers of the various ambulances acted, so far as time permitted, as sanitary officers, and in later days a well-organised Sanitary Section has accomplished great things. The cleansing of camps, the appointments of sanitary offices, the provision of baths, and, generally, every possible attention to hygiene, have kept our men exceptionally free from sickness, and no praise can be too high for the men who have accomplished so much for the British soldier.
ON THE MARNE.
The pet dog of a French regiment finds wounded soldiers and brings the stretcher-bearers to them. This dog has learnt to dig himself a hole when firing is going on.
Drawn by E. Matania.[ToList]
On the other hand, of frost-bite there have been over nine thousand cases. It is questionable, however, if the vast majority of these cases are really cases of frost-bite. Medical opinion inclines to the view that most of these are a new disease known as trench foot, caused by standing in the trenches with putties too tight and boots too small.
Guy's Hospital Gazette publishes some remarkable figures. "On one occasion a rifle brigade after marching fifteen miles went at once into the trenches, and within forty-eight hours, over four hundred were incapacitated through the foot trouble described in this report. One hundred and eighty men of the Cameron Highlanders were in the trenches without being relieved for eight days and only three suffered from slight frost-bite. None of them wore anything upon their legs and feet, except boots, which may explain the sparsity of cases."
If this be so, then frost-bite of this description is also largely preventable, and the recommendation of the doctors as to large, easy fitting, and water-tight boots, less tightly bound putties, &c., will prevent most of this trouble in future.
On the whole, the country can congratulate itself very heartily on the noble and successful work of the various Red Cross departments. The doctors who have sacrificed their lives will not be forgotten, and will be regarded as heroic as any officers who have led a charge from the trenches. The nurses have earned a debt of gratitude we can never repay. Nursing efficiency has gone far since "Our Lady of the Lamp" moved with such tender dignity up and down the wards in the hospital at Scutari. We would pay our tribute of admiration to the work of our nurses in this war, and say, "Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou—thou modern lady of the lamp—excellest them all."
I must not close this chapter without a word about the well-appointed hospital ships which ply backwards and forwards between the French and British coasts, each with its doctors, nurses, and chaplains on board, bearing a freight of suffering humanity, such as our coasts have never seen before. Everything in order, everything in the way of comfort and ease provided. It was a dastardly act to aim a German torpedo against the Asturias. Fortunately the attempt failed, but what profit would it have been if this life-giving ship had been sunk? Enough surely has been done to take life. The object of such ships as these—ships which cannot be mistaken for any others—is to woo back to life, until their suffering humanity can be tenderly placed in the care of loving hands and hearts at home. Here we are waiting for them, and here we have a right to expect them, that, nursed back to health in the hospitals of our land, they may, by and by, greet wife, and mother, and child, and sweetheart in their own homes once more.