216 
THE SANITARY CARE OE THE SOLDIER. 
gentlemen, tliat ee command 33 includes the latrine also. If you look 
the matter in the face there are lots of men in the barracks standing 
looking on, and if they see the officers stand aside they say it is not of 
the least importance. Now, I maintain that it is of great importance. 
Here again, I say there are two armies : there is the army of the 
“ Queen’s Regulations,” which is kept tight and hard by the regula¬ 
tions, and there is the rational common-sense army. In the army of 
the “ Queen’s Regulations ” a Captain or a Subaltern takes the Prin¬ 
cipal Medical Officer round ; but there is another common-sense army, 
in which the Commanding Officer himself goes round with the Principal 
Medical Officer. Believe me, that the Commanding Officer, just like 
the Irish landlord, has his duties as well as his rights. You must 
remember that your command is supreme, and when the Commanding 
Officer goes round with the Principal Medical Officer the result is 
enormously good. The Subaltern does not know much about these 
things, but the Commanding Officer is responsible to the army and to 
England for all these things. I maintain that it is absolutely essential ; 
it is not a question of rank, but is of great importance to the soldiers. 
I would like to say a word here on the question of the soldier’s 
bedding. The soldier is allowed 24 lbs. of straw per quarter, and with 
this he makes the bed and bolster, no pillow is allowed him. I have 
brought with me here to-night the two sheets which are used in the 
army; I think it will be instructive for you to see them. One is the 
hospital sheet which is used by the soldier in hospital, and the other, 
which anyone might imagine was a piece of navy canvas, is the soldier’s 
barrack sheet, it is a piece of canvas which has come here by mistake, 
and is called a barrack sheet. We are now pursuing the reasons why 
the barrack-room smells. The soldier does not wash; the men are 
lying there close together; the ventilation may be interfered with. 
But we now come to the bedding. The bedding is of straw and he 
gets two sheets. How often are they changed ? They are only changed 
once a month, and the condition of those sheets, when they are used, 
becomes something very marked indeed. A soldier, mind, who does not 
washy and whose body is not always clean, is lying for one month be¬ 
tween those two pieces of canvas, and the result is very trying. I main¬ 
tain that we might go to the country with a cry of a fortnightly washing 
for the sheets ; and it would be a great comfort to the men. But you 
must also remember thafe if you give this coarse kind of sheet to the 
soldier he will not use it at all, and I find that only about one-fourfch 
of the men use their sheets ; the rest of the men turn in in their flannel 
shirts. And in the artillery where they have got drawers they turn in 
as they come out of stables. A man goes to the stables, where he 
works all day and sweats hard (because your drivers work very hard 
indeed), he comes out with his drawers and shirt soaking in sweat and 
turns in and lies in this sweating condition in the blankets, and the 
blankets are washed only once a year and the sheets once a month. 
This man comes before me the next morning at the Auxiliary Hospital, 
I strip him, and he comes out of his flannel shirt that he has been 
sweating in for a week, and he puts off from his clothes a small portion 
of horse manure that comes out from between his waistcoat and his 
