210 
THE SANITARY CARE OP THE SOLDIER. 
live in. For whose sake ? For all your sakes. And why ? If the 
soldier sleeps for eight or nine hours in that bad atmosphere, when he 
rises in the morning he is in a semi-poisoned state, he does not feel 
fresh and fit for work, and what is the result ? he looks about for drink 
as a stimulus, the soldier after a long night in that bad atmosphere, 
stupified by bad gases, may also be below par in a nerve sense and be 
in a bad temper—that is to say, he is not fit and well as he should be. 
The difference of good and bad air in its action on ourselves is very 
well shown by the depressed state in which we feel ourself on an Indian 
troopship when coming up on deck in the morning from the stuffy 
cabin below stairs where we may have passed the night and the feeling 
of freshness and elasticity we feel after sleeping in some well-ventilated 
Indian tent : in the one case we are in good temper and fit and fresh 
for work; in the other case we are below par and unfit for work. 
Why ? Because in the troopship we are semi-poisoned by the poisonous 
gases and organic matter given off by the hundreds of people in the 
crowded Tween decks below and which drifts back into the officer’s 
cabin and into Pandemonium. The soldier, then, has a fixed and 
definite ration of air allowed him by the State. Just as he is allowed 
a “ ration” of money called pay, and a ec ration ” of food, and a “ ration ” 
of clothing, and a ration of water in the tropics to sustain his existence, 
so he is allowed by the regulations a “ ration of air,” and there is no 
more legal right to take away from him that defined ration of air by 
overcrowding him than there is to take away from him his pay, his 
food, or his clothing allowances. We must never forget also that the 
ration of air of the soldier is in no sense a full ration. If I were to 
sit down in a physiological laboratory and deal with the ration of air 
in a purely scientific and abstract manner I would then say that on 
purely physiological grounds he requires 3600 cubic feet of air per 
hour to keep him healthy and fit. The Sanitary Regulations, which 
were framed in 1860, and which still govern the army, were only tenta¬ 
tive, and as the official wording goes, “ Only for the present time (1860) ” 
only give the soldier 1200 cubic feet of air per hour ; therefore he is 
to the bad the difference between 1200 cubic feet and 3600 cubic feet 
per hour. In those bygone days, so wrongly called the good old days, 
the terribly overcrowded state of the men caused the dreadful atmos¬ 
phere of the barracks, bringing about air poisoning and ending in 
consumption. While the deaths in the civil population of the military 
age (20 to 40) were 10 per 1000, in the splendid cavalry of the line 
they were 18 per 1000; in the regiments of Foot Guards they were 20 
per 1000, and in the infantry of the line 15 per 1000, as against 10 
per 1000 of the same ages in the civil populations. That is to say, 
this elaborately turned out, heavily pipeclayed, and absurdly dressed 
soldier of the old pre-Crimean day was dying of practically preventable 
destructive lung disease, and the army medical service up to 1858 had no 
power to say one word of advice or warning in this most serious death- 
rate. In those bad old times it was an often quoted saying of old school 
Generals that the opinion of the military doctor was valuable when it 
was asked for, that is to say no sanitary initiative existed for the doctors. 
Since 1857, however, this power of sanitary suggestion has existed, 
