The influence of war on disease / by H.D. Rolleston.

  • Rolleston, Humphry Davy, Sir, 1862-1944.
Date:
[1916?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The influence of war on disease / by H.D. Rolleston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    From “ The Practitioner ” for January, 1916. THE INFLUENCE OF WAR ON DISEASE. By SURGEON-GENERAL (TEMP.) IT. D. ROLLESTON M D F.R.C.P., R.N. * ' ** Consultant Physician to the Royal Navy, Royal Naval Hospital, Haslar ; Senior Physician, St. George’s Hospital, etc. It is obvious that the altered conditions of life during war must influence the health of the Navy and Army. O11 the improvement of physique and health of recruits from towns, as the result of training in fresh air and sunshine, and on the practical absence of venereal disease in the isolated fleet, it is unnecessary to insist. But we must gratefully note that, as a result of the labours of those responsible for the sanitation of our defenders, the health of the Navy and of the Army has, with the exception of those in the Dardanelles, been remarkably good. The health of the regular Navy has indeed been much better than in peace time. In the Grand Fleet, the percentage of men on the sick list is under 1 per cent., often only o*6 per cent., and the figures would be even lower but for the higher percen- tage incidence among the men of the Royal Naval Reserve and the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. On two battleships with a complement of over 1,000 each, which I happened to visit on two successive days, there were two men only in the sick-bay. With the progress of this greatest of wars, evi¬ dence is gradually accumulating as to the modifications thus induced in medicine and surgery, and upon these it may be appropriate to offer a few general remarks, and then to refer specially to some of the morbid conditions which have been prominent since August, 1914. GENERAL REMARKS. War, by massing together in close quarters large numbers of men, and especially of young recruits, facilitates the spread of infection, and thus fevers which, in peace, are endemic or sporadic become epidemic ; this has been the universal experience, and was shown in the case of typhoid fever in the South African War, of typhus in Serbia, and of paratyphoid P 20022—1 A