THE SANITARY CARE OP THE SOLDIER. 
213 
case has occurred, I think, even in this garrison where the urine has 
gone not only on to the floor, but through the floor, and has come out- 
on the roof of the room below. A case occurred before my eyes where 
a soldier on the inner side of the room was sleeping with the head of 
his bed against the wall where the urine tub was and the urine soaked 
through, and he complained, and I think justly, of that urine oozing 
out towards where his bed was. Those questions are very important. 
We want, in the first place, light at night over the urinals, and we want 
regular urinals built as you see them at railway stations, and attached 
to the buildings with water flushing them and light over them, where 
the soldier can urinate without soiling the floor and tainting the air of 
the barrack passages. Why should railway stations and other places 
beat us in civilisation ? I think we can get these urinals if we jointly 
push the matter, and we mean to do it; we will push away at this 
urine tub and get something better for the soldier. Even an iron 
bucket would be better than an absorbent wooden tub. 
My next point is about bath-rooms and lavatories. I could not 
exaggerate to yon the defective condition as regards cleanliness of the 
person of our soldiers. No one sees as we in the medical service do 
the absolute filth of the soldier's person. A man comes up before me 
well dressed and well turned out, but he is a whited sepulchre; the 
condition of his person and the odour that comes from him are very 
unpleasant. What is the reason ? The reason is that the regulations 
only allow one per cent, of baths for the troops, that is to say that for 
every 100 "soldiers only one bath is allowed ; and they allow 12 basins 
per 100 soldiers and four foot-baths. But you must remember that the 
soldier is not allowed any warm water to wash with. I cannot tell you 
what an important matter this is. This odour, this esprit de corps in 
the very worst sense which comes from the body of the soldier is most 
offensive. If anyone will come over to the Auxiliary Hospital in the 
morning you will have a smell like the odour of a troop-ship in the 
Red Sea. Now, all that arises from preventable causes. We want 
warm water laid on most awfully. I maintain that from the 15th of 
October to the 15th of April all bathing ceases in some garrisons, 
and the body of the soldier is not washed at all. That comes before 
us doctors in the most striking way. I have to examine a man's 
chest and the odour is most trying. Remember the cubic space is 
based on the clean man ; but you have this man going to bed in the 
barrack-room with his body not washed, so that the air becomes offen¬ 
sive and tainted, and this affects the health, the fitness, and, in the end, 
the discipline of the soldier. As you know in this garrison here during 
the past few months a great improvement has been made that is to say 
that by efforts of Colonel Spragge warm water arrangements have 
been placed in five groups of barracks, and I had an opportunity the 
other day of totalling up the number of baths taken. I beg of you 
not to say that soldiers will not do certain things, for I find that be¬ 
tween the end of November and the 13th of January in this garrison 
1200 warm baths were taken in one of the five groups of barracks 
alone in the baths quite lately put up. And those baths, mind you, 
are worth in the town 6d. each. What is going on round the barracks 
