Typhoid, the destroyer of armies, and its abolition ; The theory of air-borne typhoid in armies / by Leigh Canney.

  • Canney, Leigh.
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Typhoid, the destroyer of armies, and its abolition ; The theory of air-borne typhoid in armies / by Leigh Canney. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    and our recent war has not been an exception in this regard.’ Such are the catastrophes brought about by the laissez-boire theory on service. A very brief review of the progress of sanitation and prevention of disease at stations in peace will give some idea of what the Medical Corps can do, and has done, when unhampered by the fear of ‘cutting’ or delay of their transport, and when the apathy of combatant officers has been a negligible quantity. Between 1826-46 it was twice as deadly to serve in the home army as for men of the same age in civil life; but in the period 1861-70 the death-rate per thousand in the home army fell to g‘45> and in 1898 to 3'5g, much of the improvement being due to the medical recommendations urged upon the Royal Commission following the Crimean War. The average mortality on home service from typhoid between 1837 - 46 was seventeen times greater than in 1898 (excluding the cases arriving from Khartoum). A similar improvement has been attained by their exertions at many of our foreign stations, notably at Gibraltar, where the incidence of typhoid was eighteen times greater in the period 1837-46 than now. At Malta the incidence of water-borne disease was formerly forty times greater than in England; it is now approaching the condi- tion of Gibraltar. In Canada stations are nearly as healthy as at home. In Bermuda, which long had an evil reputation, great progress has been made by the R.A.M.C.