204 
THE SANITARY CARE OF THE SOLD TER. 
Officers from regiments, still we allot one Medical Officer to each regi¬ 
ment, corps or barracks, and he fulfils, or ought to fulfil in the fullest 
degree, the duties of the old Regimental Medical Officer, so far as the 
sanitary needs of the soldier is concerned. So far as such officers have 
served under me in India (or in England), I have said to him :—“ It is 
your business to know as much about the life of the soldier, and to 
know everything that he does from morning until night, and, mark 
you, all through the night, as though you wore the same uniform as 
himself.” It is absolutely essential that we in the medical service 
should know this, because we are not solely the treaters of disease ; 
we are essentially a preventive service of sanitary specialists, specially 
enlisted and specially paid as the preventers, as well as curers, of 
disease; and it is no more possible for us to act as preventers of disease 
without knowing the whole life of the soldier than it would be for a 
great physician like Sir Andrew Clarke or any other great physician 
in London to treat you individually when you are ill without inquiring 
into every detail of your life and knowing exactly what the causes 
were which operated upon your health. This Medical Officer, then, 
whom the medical service details to look after each regiment or group 
of batteries should in the first place know the whole environment of 
the soldier and his daily life. -He should fully understand the hour he 
rises at, the hour of his morning’s stables, the hour of his breakfast, 
the class of breakfast he gets, the various duties he does during the 
day at his stables and drill; the hour of his dinner, the quality and 
quantity of his dinner, his work after dinner in the stables or at drill ; 
the character of his tea, and in the evening how he finds recreation 
when his work is done. He should know every hole and corner of the 
barrack he lives in; and all through the night how that barrack is 
ventilated and its sanitary condition cared for ; he should know exactly 
how the soldier is clothed, and what the rations are that he gets during 
the day. Those things can be taught to any young officer, and officers 
who have not seen the weekly diaries of Sanitary Medical Officers 
would be surprised, I think, to read them over. I can produce here 
the diary of Medical Officers doing sanitary work in this garrison, and 
I should doubt if there is a single detail of the soldier’s life from morn¬ 
ing till night and night again till morning that we are not trying to 
study and to master, because we have only one thought, namely, how 
best to work with you and in every way to combine with you, so that 
England, who looks to us both to care for her soldiers, may be made 
stronger by our conjoint action for the day of danger. 
I say, then, that those Medical Officers who are detailed for the sani¬ 
tary care of regiments or batteries are doing those sanitary inspections 
frequently during the week. Thus on one day of the week they would 
go and inspect the barrack buildings and see them thoroughly, and I 
always find in any garrisons where I have been in charge as Medical 
Officer that it is not possible for any Medical Officer to do his sanitary 
duty properly by the regiment if he endeavours to carry out inspections 
of men and barracks on one day; because if he stops for a moment to 
look at anything that is defective in the sanitary state of the barracks 
he is sure to be keeping the men in a distant part of the barracks 
