Diseases of occupation from the legislative, social, and medical points of view / by Thomas Oliver.

  • Oliver, Thomas, Sir, 1853-1942.
Date:
[1908]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Diseases of occupation from the legislative, social, and medical points of view / by Thomas Oliver. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    CHAPTER XV SOLDIERS, SAILORS, AND FISHERMEN ALTHOUGH picked men and living when on home service under favourable hygienic surroundings, soldiers have a rate of mortality different but little from that of civilians of their own age. There are few middle-aged men in the rank and file of the British Army, and while this is largely the result of the system that at present prevails, it is admitted that a soldier forty years of age is in most instances an older man than a civilian of the same age. There is an opinion that the abolition of the “ sentry go ” as carried out by soldiers in former years and the assumption of this duty by a special class of men known as military police will do much to lighten the burden of the young soldier and relieve him of work which was monotonous to and always disliked by him. Once a recruit has overcome the difficulties and hardships of his training, he has often, if in the infantry, more time on his hands than he can usefully employ. He has therefore often periods of enforced idleness which do not always help him physically or morally. His opportunities of smoking and of drinking are too many, and in other ways he is apt to go astray from paths that make for health. What is said of a soldier on home service applies with greater force to the soldier sent abroad. Foreign stations are not all equally healthy. The fault is not always in the barracks, but in the country itself and in the carelessness of the men in regard to drinking water outside the barrack area. Again enforced idleness, ennui, Venus, and Bacchus tell their tale, and as a consequence the death- and sick-rate of the British Army on foreign service is much higher than a