THE SANITARY CARE OF THE SOLDIER. 
205 
waiting for him and keeping them away from some important duty. I 
repeat from long experience that it is not possible for any Medical 
Officer to make those inspections of men and barracks at the same 
time and on a single day. 
The officer then inspects the barracks and he inspects the men. 
Now, many of the younger Medical Officers have complained, and 
are complaining, about the difficulty that they experience in carry¬ 
ing out these inspections. The other day I saw a letter in a military 
paper from a Medical Officer proposing that all these inspections 
should be abolished, that it was impossible to carry them out, and 
that they were a perfect farce. On the very day that that letter 
appeared in the paper, on the parade of this very garrison one man 
was sent off parade sick with scarlet fever, out of the West Bear 
Range; another man was sent off sick with a disease like scarlet 
fever; and I myself on another inspection sent a man to hospital 
with jaundice. Now, why are the Medical Officers wishing to get 
rid of those inspections, for they are really a most important mat¬ 
ter ? It is because it is difficult for them to get proper parades of the 
men. They go into the barracks and they find it difficult to know to 
whom they should look; a parade is formed up for them in a scratch 
way and is often a feeble and farcical affair. I am not speaking of 
Woolwich particularly, but over and over again I have had to write to 
C.O/s and point out that while the number of men in a corps or gar¬ 
rison is strong, the number on parades given to us are very weak. 
In the same way in going about on the sanitary inspection of the bar¬ 
racks one does not know to whom to look to go round with one. I 
say to a Medical Officer, “ You are posted to the sanitary care of such 
a regiment. I beg you to go down and leave your card at the orderly- 
room. I specially want you to know the Commanding Officer socially 
and personally,” because unless you are able to approach him socially 
and personally you know when letter writing begins efficiency constantly 
ends, and it is essentially necessary that there should be the most free 
and complete intercourse between the two. But if we find this great 
difficulty exists in the first instance in getting our sanitary officers 
themselves taken round the barracks by some one who is responsible 
and who knows the barracks, and secondly in getting a good health 
inspection parade of men, the whole thing degenerates into a farce, 
and every soldier undervalues it. “ Let us, I say, most earnestly come 
to some definite conclusion one way or the other on this sanitary 
routine; either let us do the thing well or let it be abolished,” be¬ 
cause to-day, in the year 1894, the question of half-and-half measures 
and compromise is coming to an end in everything, and we in the 
medical service want to know how our duties stand, and what they are, 
and we desire to do them if we are really responsible. In a certain 
station abroad that I have got in my eye, I went to the Commanding 
Officer of a regiment in the garrison and I said to him, as the senior 
Medical Officer of the station, “ It is my interest and yours that we 
should both work together. I will give you an officer who will make 
your regimental inspections, but I beg you to give him a responsible 
officer to go round with him.” I said then, and I say still, that I do 
