122 LICE AND THEIR MENACE TO MAN 



present in poorer districts and places where 

 facilities for cleanliness are limited, and unless 

 great care is taken our fighting men will bring 

 home many more. Men still capable of infecting 

 lice that feed on them are returning to their 

 homes every day, and will continue to do so until 

 the disease can be stamped out, or such a treat- 

 ment for the sufferer discovered that his blood 

 is truly freed from the infection. So far the 

 trouble has been by no means confined to our 

 armies alone. The enemy, who suffers from it 

 too, named it " Volhynia fever," and sometimes 

 " five day fever." The first shows us how 

 widely spread the illness is, the second merely 

 draws attention to a characteristic of the disease 

 which is by no means constant. Neither name 

 is very helpful, or likely to survive when once 

 we know the nature of the germ which produces 

 the illness. 



As men have passed from front to front they 

 have taken trench fever with them, till we can 

 say with certainty that all the European theatres 

 of war are involved and that the disease has 

 appeared in Egypt and possibly in Mesopotamia 

 also. There was a time when some amongst us 

 might have thought that this mattered little, as 

 an attack of trench fever was but a simple affair, 

 short-lived and soon forgotten. Even had this 

 been so, the temporary loss in man power to our 

 armies must have been immense ; but ask the men 

 who have suffered from trench fever what they 



