vni CONQUEST OF DISEASE 205 



the floating force of twenty-five thousand men. In 

 this war, the enlightened and educative measures of 

 the Japanese reduced the deaths due to disease to one- 

 quarter of those due to battle. Thanks to the adoption 

 of scientific methods, the incidence of disease in the 

 British army during the great European War has been 

 far lighter than in any previous campaign. The magni- 

 ficent results achieved by attention to the essential 

 principles of sanitation and preventive medicine have 

 disposed we hope for ever of the old saying, " Disease, 

 not battle, digs the soldier's grave." The health of the 

 British Expeditionary Force is not only safeguarded by 

 sanitary precautions, but also protected against typhoid 

 fever by a treatment of inoculation instituted by Sir 

 Almroth Wright. The success of these methods is little 

 short of marvellous. Deaths of British soldiers from 

 typhoid are much less in proportion than in any preceding 

 war, and men fully protected by two inoculations escape 

 punishment by the disease almost without exception. 



The same principles of preventive medicine are 

 applicable with no less success to civil life. What is true 

 of typhoid, cholera, dysentery and malaria, is equally 

 true of smallpox, tuberculosis, yellow fever, scurvy, 

 rabies, plague and diphtheria, and is true also of numerous 

 other common illnesses ; applicable, therefore, to the 

 poverty and distress which result from them. 



Smallpox was formerly looked upon as practically 

 unavoidable by members of the human family. People 

 used to advertise for servants who had got over smallpox 

 in much the same way as we now inquire, before pur- 

 chasing a dog, whether it has had distemper. The 

 difficulty of getting through life without smallpox was 

 expressed in a popular saying very current in Germany 

 in the eighteenth century ; von Pocken und Liebe bleiben 



