MILITAEY HYGIENE 989 



limb, may be controlled by putting down a waggon cover or 

 sail on which the horses stand to be dressed. A similar 

 contrivance may be arranged for the dressing of skin cases 

 where water dressings, such as izal, are employed; and 

 to prevent waste of these, especially when running short 

 of material, a depression in the ground, covered by the 

 sail, acts as a well into which the dressing runs as it drips 

 off the horses, and after straining through a sack may be 

 recovered for subsequent dressings. 



Beds for the sick may be made by digging up the 

 ground to the depth of a foot. A circular bed is the best, 

 with a peg in the centre well sunk out of harm's way. 



The most important general equipment for a hospital 

 consists of nose-bags, head-collars, ropes, and picket lines. 

 Without these it is impossible to deal with the sick as they 

 pour into hospital. They should be as much part of the 

 hospital equipment as the medicine chests. To have to 

 admit one, two, or three hundred sick without a head-rope 

 or picket line is a serious matter. 



There is no necessity to describe the group system of 

 arranging the cases, as it has already been mentioned in 

 dealing with a Field Hospital, but without it the whole 

 thing is chaos. 



If a campaign lasts long enough, enclosures of plain (not 

 barbed) wire can be made, with mangering, where the 

 horses may be turned loose. These enclosures should 

 never have more than 200 animals in them. A preferable 

 size is fifty, as the supervision is better. 



If in a bush country, these enclosures may be protected 

 from the cold of winter by having bushes laced through 

 the wire of the enclosure. Some useful hints for winter 

 protection of sick horses on a campaign, may be obtained 

 from the figures on p. 856. 



We cannot go into the details of hospital organization or 

 routine, but the principle to bear in mind is this: the 

 hospital should never start from its destination without 

 the needful equipment. With 500 head-collars, 1,000 

 head-ropes, hundreds of nose-bags, hundreds of fathoms of 



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