THE GREAT WAR IN THE ZONE OF THE ARMY. . 329 



or bury it, dig latrines and are at times indispensable in many ways. 

 Unburied bodies and carcasses rapidly breed myriads of flies, 

 streams polluted by dead are contaminated with their intestinal bac- 

 teria, the thirsty and tired men drink the water on the line, sicken 

 and their germs of disease raised by passage to high virulence, and 

 teeming in uncovered feces, are carried back by these flies to spread 

 like a wave of cloud gas over the food of advancing reinforcements. 



Latrines are mere straddle trenches a foot wide and a foot deep. 

 They must be scrupulously covered by some one. 



The question of safe water is settled by chlorinization. If the 

 Lyster bag cannot be used, an ingenious American device is the 

 dosing of the contents of some sergeant's canteen with a full tube 

 of the powder, a plan suggested by Zinnser. The men can be ad- 

 vised that all they have to do to get safe water from the battlefield is 

 to fill their canteens from any possible, unpoisoned source and put 

 "a little," about a teaspoonful, from the sergeant's canteen into 

 their own. In about 20 minutes they can drink reasonably safe 

 water. No one will ever know the thousands of American lives 

 saved by the bag devised by Colonel Lyster, of our medical corps, 

 in the Great War. Vaccination against typhoid is not everything. 



The Back Area in Trench Warfare (Position Warfare). 



This is itself a subject for another paper. Only essential sani- 

 tary arrangements necessary to complement trench life will be men- 

 tioned. 



Bathing and Delousing. 



This should be at least under the supervision of the medical de- 

 partment for it is a powerful weapon against disease, as has been 

 seen. 



All men returning from a tour of duty in the trenches are put 

 through the bath and delouser. The underlying principle of im- 

 portance is not the bath ; it is the killing of vermin and itch mites on 

 clothing by heat. There should be two per division with an output 

 of one thousand a day. There should be a medical department floor- 

 walker to detect all skin diseases. 



