THE SANITARY CARE OP THE SOLDIER. 
209 
urged forward, then, not only by the actual breakdown of the soldier’s 
health, which we see for ourselves, and by the reports of the soldiers 
who are actually our patients who tell us the reasons of their illness, 
but constantly the medical service is being made use of by officers of 
rank and standing to urge forward improvements or recommendations 
which they themselves hesitate to put before the authorities. How 
often have I said to such an officer, ee You are using me to put this 
matter forward; why not represent it yourself? You have rank, 
standing, and position ; why come to me ? ” He will reply, “ The 
medical service is independent, able to speak, and unless you assist we 
cannot succeed.” I maintain, then, that General or even higher officers 
in high command, when they receive recommendations or suggestions 
from the medical department, may be, and often are, entirely unaware 
of the real sources of the recommendation. 
The more hard or unyielding the General, the more is the medical 
service used to move him. How clear, how definite, how unassailable, 
should be the rank and status of the sanitary officer liable to the pres¬ 
sure of the upper and the nether millstone in the clear discharge of 
his duties to the army. Surely he forms a definite part of the army 
that cannot with any sense of justice be put aside. We in the medical 
service knowing this responsibility, knowing these heavy duties, know¬ 
ing the various unseen currents acting upon us, and placing us in direct 
prominence as sanitary officials speaking for the good of the army as a 
whole can never cease to claim defined and unassailable military status, 
not merely for our own personal sake, but for that army who in every 
rank, from the highest to the lowest, are at times compelled to have 
recourse to our assistance. 
The army does not want a body of weak-kneed, trembling Medical 
Officers with defective status and shaky rank, but rather a highly-trained 
and thoroughly disciplined and independent body of sanitary advisers in 
deep sympathy with the army as a whole, and bringing all the help of 
modern scientific investigation to bear on the preservation of the health 
efficiency of that army which, scattered over an enormous Empire, is 
fighting a trying battle with disease and death in peace and in war 
wherever the English flag is flying. 
Let us return now to purely sanitary details. The Sanitary Commis¬ 
sion in 1858 fixed on 600 cubic feet of air space for the soldier, and 
they put in ventilators which enable this air to be changed twice within 
one hour. There is a law governing the size of the openings of the 
inlet and outlet ventilators which enables a certain fixed amount of air 
to come into the barrack-room, and these give the soldier his definite 
“ ration of air.” The air of the average badly-ventilated barrack-room 
about 3 o’clock in the morning can become almost poisonous, and a 
horrible odour of organic matter from the soldier’s body and bad air 
from his lungs can and often does produce a thoroughly deleterious 
atmosphere. It is as necessary to have a good system of ventilation in 
a barrack-room so that the air may be changed, as it is necessary to 
have the barrack latrine outside flushed by water. This flushing with 
fresh air called ventilation is wanting to sweep away the poisonous 
organic matter so as to make the room sweet and fit for the soldier to 
