HEALTH EXPERIMENTS IN THE FRENCH ARMY. 205 



" My father and my grandfather drank this water, and they 

 lived to be old men. I have no time to bother with doctors* 

 notions/' 



During the last month of March there was a sudden outburst 

 of a strange and fatal disease among the old men in the city poor- 

 house at Nanterre. It was accompanied by tetanoid symptoms 

 (lockjaw), and was attributed by the physician in charge to the 

 ergot of which he discovered traces in the very bad rye bread 

 furnished to the inmates. The director, when asked about the 

 reason assigned, is reported to have answered comfortably, " Doc- 

 tors' humbug ! " 



It is the good luck of the army that an intelligent service of 

 hygiene can be enforced whenever the authorities wish. The will 

 began with M. de Freycinet, who was Minister of War through 

 so many changing administrations. He set about substituting 

 spring water or filtered water in place of the water from wells or 

 rivers, which had previously been used by garrisons. By 1890, 

 in comparison with 1887, the number of typhoid cases had dimin- 

 ished in the proportion of thirty-six per cent. By 1891 the de- 

 crease was forty-nine per cent. In the single military jurisdic- 

 tion of Paris it reached seventy-five per cent. This astonishing 

 and satisfactory change followed immediately upon the change 

 of the water supply. 



The record of the last three years only confirms this brilliant 

 demonstration of the real work which can be accomplished by 

 rational hygiene. There were five hundred and forty fewer cases 

 of typhoid fever in the army posts in 1894 than in 1891, though 

 the percentage of deaths to cases was slightly higher. But the 

 most striking facts are found in the statistics of particular places 

 like Paris, which has always had the reputation of being a center 

 of this special disease. 



Among the soldiers under the military government of the city 

 there were eight hundred and twenty-four typhoid cases in 1888. 

 The following year the number increased to eleven hundred and 

 seventy-nine. At that time the water of the Vanne was substi- 

 tuted for the contaminated Seine water. The cases of the next 

 four years numbered, respectively, only two hundred and ninety- 

 nine, two hundred and seventy-six, two hundred and ninety-three, 

 and two hundred and fifty-eight. Last year the Vanne itself be- 

 came contaminated through an accident, the history of which has 

 been traced conclusively. The result was an increase of typhoid 

 cases in the Paris garrison to four hundred and thirty-six, of 

 which three hundred and ten occurred in the three months of 

 February, March, and April. During January and February of 

 the present year (1895) there were only eight cases in all. 



The fact that typhoid fever comes and goes with impure drink- 



