On the sanitary condition of the British army and specially on the want of space in barracks / by William Augustus Guy.

  • Guy, William A. (William Augustus), 1810-1885.
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the sanitary condition of the British army and specially on the want of space in barracks / by William Augustus Guy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    before a Committee of the whole House of Commons (not a small Committee like that whose Report we have been considering, but a Committee of the whole House) facts relating to the condition of the prisoner, bearing, many of them, a much closer resemblance than it is pleasant to think of to the barrack revelations of this Report; and the House not only gave him a vote of thanks, but that very year passed two Acts which liberated the poor prisoner (for he was often a debtor merely and not a culprit) from the evils under which he was suffering—from illegal fees on the one hand, and from the perils of the gaol-fever on the other. But if any man is sceptical as to the reality of sanitary science, and the power given to us of preserving health by simple means, I would ask him to go back to that same period (three quarters of a century ago) when Captain Cook demonstrated, by the example of his voyages round the world, that the sailor’s life might be preserved from scurvy, and the other fatal diseases which afflicted him. I would remind him how triumphantly John Howard proved that gaol-fever might be rooted out by the same means which we are now invited to apply to our barracks ; and how Jenner proved to demonstration that, if men would but consent to use the boon which Providence had enabled him to place at their disposal, the small- pox might be driven from the face of the earth. Such cases as these ought to satisfy the most sturdy stickler for precedents. Three such cases, occurring as they did in the same quarter of a century of our eventful history, would be enough in themselves to constitute the glory of any nation but this. I say that you have precedents enough. The sanitary history of the army itself abounds in them. But if we must have another precedent, we shall find it ready to our hands in the contrast afforded in the Crimea between the frightful effects of negligence, carelessness, and incompetency in the management of affairs, and the happy state of things brought about by their opposites. And now I shall take the liberty of addressing you in the lan- guage of entreaty. I do beseech you, by the glorious military history of England; by all that our soldiers have done and suffered for us in times past ; by the triumphs and trials of the Crimea and of India;—I entreat you by your recollections of the heights of