THE USE OF ALCOHOL IX MEDICINE. 91 



A few months after my transfer to this regiment I came home 

 in a troop-ship, and there again my divergence of treatment left 

 me utterly isolated. I was third in order of seniority on board, 

 and was put in medical charge of the women and children. It 

 was the last troop-ship of the season, and carried only invalids 

 and soldiers' families. Of the latter there were about seventy, 

 with an average of perhaps two children in each. On the day 

 after leaving Bombay a case of measles was found on board. I 

 took the case into hospital, and every precaution to isolate it was 

 adopted unavailing, however. The sixth day afterward six cases 

 were reported. After another six days thirty more were found 

 infected and put under treatment ; and I think that every child 

 on board passed through the disease. The only number I can 

 now recollect is that, after discharging all convalescents, thirty- 

 six cases were sent to Haslar Hospital on arrival at Portsmouth. 

 There must have been from eighty to one hundred cases in all. 

 All these I treated myself in the hospital, restricting myself to 

 this duty at first with the idea of isolation, afterward in order to 

 control the treatment, for which I was personally responsible. I 

 gave no stimulants, and met every case of high temperature 

 promptly by wet towels to the chest and abdomen, and by giving 

 for food very dilute Swiss milk ad libitum. This treatment met 

 with deep disapproval on the part of the mothers, who were all 

 strangers to me, and accustomed to very different treatment. 

 Toward the end of the voyage I found the women were not un- 

 supported in their disapproval. They carried their complaints 

 to the various officers commanding detachments, and thus offi- 

 cially to my senior, the surgeon-major in charge. Now this sur- 

 geon-major had been unlucky. He had treated only two chil- 

 dren on board, one of them his own son. They were both dead, 

 whereas I had lost no cases, and so, although there was a differ- 

 ence of opinion between us, I had not much difficulty in arrang- 

 ing that the treatment should be left entirely in my hands. I 

 will summarize the result. I was the only medical officer on 

 board who gave no alcohol. I treated personally the largest 

 number of cases, and I alone lost no patients. Moreover, of three 

 children who died on board, two, as I have said, were treated by 

 the senior medical officer, and the third by my assistant. I will 

 give particulars of this, as it is a most illustrative case. It was 

 not a case of measles, and was treated by him in the women's 

 quarters, and I first heard of it when he told me the child was 

 dying. I asked him to let me try to save it, which he gladly did. 

 I put it in hospital with my measles cases. I stopped the wine, 

 very much to its mother's disgust, stayed with it almost an hour, 

 feeding it with milk and water, which it took greedily, and left 

 it fully assured it was out of danger. The child lived for a week, 



