Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/219

Rh theory that pure water is a preservative against typhoid fever. It is probably more apparent than real. It concerns the attendants on the sick in the military hospitals. These men can hardly be exposed to the danger of drinking contaminated water, and yet many of their number fall victims to each typhoid epidemic. In their case the disease seems to have a real contagion. But it should be remembered that the permanence of their service with the sick undermines their strength until the system no longer resists the action of the morbid germs, to which, moreover, they are exposed in a thousand ways. Their case is no exception to the rule that, under ordinary conditions of life, typhoid fever is propagated only by impure drinking water.

With dysentery—that other enemy of the soldier, both in garrison and during campaign—French military hygiene has not proved itself so successful. Until 1892 there was even a steady increase of cases, though not of deaths. Since that time there has been a diminution of cases and, in a measure, of deaths. So far, the only amelioration seems to result from a constant supervision of the daily disinfecting of privies, and from a provision of conveniences which spare the soldier the necessity of suddenly exposing himself to the chill of night in crossing an open yard.

With cholera, on the other hand, the most encouraging progress has been made. The epidemic of 1893 cruelly tried the civil population of Lorient. The garrison had but a single case. This was a soldier who contracted the disease in Vannes, where he had been in attendance on his mother, who died of it. The same experience was repeated at Brest, where the civil population suffered for months together. In the garrison only two cases declared themselves from first to last. In Marseilles, out of nineteen cases there were only three deaths.

For measles and scarlatina the French army has found neither remedy nor preventive. These diseases come to the barracks from the civil population, among which they exist permanently. Both have gone on increasing in the garrisons since 1887—measles with spasmodic intermittences, scarlatina steadily.

The most disquieting progress has been made by that strange malady—la grippe. This alone, from the first months of the present year, will give a high rate of mortality to 1895 among the military as well as the civil population. Only one conclusion can. so far be drawn from the experience of the army. This is the simple fact that the disease is a permanent danger which military physicians have henceforth to foresee as they do cholera, cerebrospinal meningitis, and diphtheria.

The latter disease, formerly so rare among adults, has also made alarming progress since 1888 among soldiers. It is now hoped that the antitoxine (serum) of Dr. Roux will be as