BREATHING 183 



Army life is perhaps the best possible test. It is the 

 almost universal experience of British army officers who 

 have led their men through arduous campaigns in the 

 hottest parts of Africa, and who have given much study 

 to the question, that alcohol, so far from being an aid to 

 endure severe exertion and to resist great extremes of heat, 

 acts as a positive injury. 1 



General Kitchener prohibited all drinks containing alco- 

 hol in the Sudan campaign. Respecting the result, a war 

 correspondent said : " Of one thing I am sure, that the 

 mortality from fever and other diseases during the Atbara 

 campaign and the final Omdurman campaign would have 

 been infinitely greater than it was if alcoholic liquors had 

 been allowed as a beverage, or even as an occasional 

 ration." 



Lord Roberts, the British commander in the Boer war, 

 claims that the effective power of an army to endure extreme 

 heat and cold is always in proportion to the number of 

 total abstainers in the ranks. 



1 A party of engineers were surveying in the Sierra Nevadas. They 

 camped at a great height above the sea level, where the air was very cold, 

 and they were chilled and uncomfortable. Some of them drank a little 

 whisky and felt less uncomfortable; some of them drank a lot of whisky 

 and went to bed feeling very jolly and comfortable indeed. But in the 

 morning the men who had not taken any whisky got up in good condition ; 

 those who had taken a little whisky got up feeling very miserable; the 

 men who had taken a lot of whisky did not get up at all : they were simply 

 frozen to death. They had warmed the surface of their bodies at the 

 expense of their internal organs. T. LEANDER BRUNTON, M.D. (St. Bar- 

 tholomew Hospital, London), in Lectures on the Action of Medicine. 



