Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/220

208 in dealing with the dangerous microbe in garrisons as it has been in children's hospitals.

Vaccination continues to give satisfactory results against smallpox. Certain attendant dangers, which are often alleged against it, are avoided by the establishment of what are called centres vaccinogènes, where military physicians supervise the preparation of suitable vaccine. This, in the form of a glycerinated pulp, has been distributed to the Madagascar expedition in quantities sufficient for the revaccination of all the men during the voyage out, and of all the porters and coolies that may be needed after the arrival on the island.

In typhus, the lesson of the barracks confirms what has long been thought to be the only safeguard against its spread. This is the total isolation of cases. The disease, which is so peculiarly contagious, seemed to have abandoned France (excepting certain remote parts of Brittany) after the wars of the first Napoleon. Two years ago it broke out among tramps in the workhouse of Amiens, and soon appeared in Paris. It afterward spread among 'the same class of the population, in and out of prison, through different parts of the country. In the following year, 1894, it broke out again, to the despair of the medical profession. It seemed to have come back to stay, though the present prospect is more favorable. During both these years there were only six cases in the army. Of these, two occurred among military infirmarians who had volunteered their services for the civil hospitals, and one was that of a gendarme whose duties brought him in close contact with tramps already attacked by the disease.

Certain lessons of hygiene, which have been learned from harsh experience by the army, are not yet appreciated by the general public. One of these is the necessity of keeping in hospitals those who are undoubtedly convalescent from epidemic or contagious diseases. This is sorely against the will of families, and often of the patients themselves, who demand permission to complete the cure at home. Formerly, when this was granted, a frequent consequence was a relapse, and, oftener still, a communication of the disease to a new circle of the population. This has been especially observed of typhoid and eruptive fevers, dysentery, and the grippe.

The French army also profits by all the recent discoveries in destroying the germs of disease. Disinfecting apparatus has been indulged in to such an extent that the health service is ready even for an unusual epidemic. What the French oddly call "coaltarisation" is applied constantly to the woodwork of barracks. Methods of permanent ventilation have also been adopted. Each garrison is now being provided with a suitable hospital, and the separate barracks have infirmaries well fitted up.