Untitled

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 277, 28 December 1914, Page 6

In ten weeks, dating from September 15, the Army Medical Service dealt with close on half.a million wounded and sick so successfully that over 50 per cent, of these men have already returned to the front. In a sense this report confirms past statements as to the attention bestowed on the allied troops at the front. While an epidemic of typhoid was ravaging the German trenches before the winter descended, there was no such unhappy state of affairs so - far as the Allies were concerned. This was not due altogether to. the care of the Medical Corps or to sanitary methods. Following on experiments carried out by the head of the Medical Service of the Val : de-Grace (Paris) Hospital, inoculation against •typhoid was made compulsory in the French Army. There is abundant proof of the effectiveness of inoculation in the case of typhoid, and no doubt that fact has induced many British officers to undergo the.treatment. Further pro-' tection against attack from this dreaded enemy and cholera is afforded the '' Tommies'' by the provision in the transport and supply service of waterfilter carts, through which the precious fluid passes and .drops its impurities before it is. allowed to reach the thirsty men in the firing lines. In this connection the lesson given the Great Powers by Japan in the Manchurian campaign has not been allowed to pass unheeded by the Allies. A writer in a current magazine makes the exceedingly interesting point that optimism and a light heart together constitute one of the most valuable prophylactics known to science,' /'Henee,'• [ .he adds; "the bfficer should do what he can to keep up the spirits of-the men, and should encourage them to sing." Fortunately for England, Tommy Atkins takes his fighting as he does most other tasks assigned him: cheerfully and lightheartedly, and he has less need of antidotes to the depression resulting from, say, weary hours in wet trenches than the more volatile piu-piu..