Page:The advancement of science by experimental research - the Harveian oration, delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, June 27th, 1883 (IA b24869958).pdf/57

 The surface of the stream may he ruffled by stoues or by mud thrown in, but these sink to the bottom and are soon forgotten. Those who have derived benefit, and it may be almost life itself from medical skill, often cast aspersions when the need has ceased—they foul the spring that has refreshed them. According to the published accounts we have no record of a campaign where the wounded suffered less from blood poisoning and sloughing sores than in the recent war in Egypt. Sir W. McCormac states: —“During this campaign there was never any outbreak of those infective diseases that have hitherto decimated the wounded in time of war. There was no pyaemia, no erysipelas, and no hospital gangrene as the result of wounds. Not a single man lost his eyesight, though there were 1494 cases of inflammatory diseases of the eyes admitted to hospital;” but, the doctors were expected to take the onus of the failure of other parts of service, to secure pure and wholesome bread, supplies of beds and sheets, pure water, and to contend with the plague of Egyptian flies;