"MURDER BY TYPHUS FEVER"

Evening Star, Issue 16086, 11 April 1916, Page 6

"MURDER BY TYPHUS FEVER"

Sir James Cricliton Browno presided on Saturday. February 5, at a meeting of tho Sanitary Inspectors' Association. Dr G. W. Saloeby. in an address on | Savins; Our Soldiers' Lives,' said tho importance of tho subject was obvious when it was told them that our infantry wastage was 15 per cent, per month, as Mr Tennant had declared in the House of Commons. He presumed that he meant tho units actually engaged in the firing line. Anything that would cut down such an appalling figure concerned them profoundly. In all previous wars bacilli had been more deadly than bullets. Hi i death rato_ from typhoid had bjcn 31 times as high amongst the 5 per cent, of the troops who had declined to bo inoculated as amongst the others. Some of tho men who had gone from this world went with almost tho last words on thoir lips: "It was my own fault, sister, I declined to be inoculated." " Thesa deaths in my judgmbnt," said .Dr Snleebv, " mainly lie at the hands of prejudice and ignorance, which since the war bewail have disseminated a wealth of lies i>s to tho nat-p.ra and resulfs of this mode of protection." Tetanus, he pointed out, had been ]nrgely abolished by anti-toxin. Not one German prisoner in* this country had Buffered from typhus fover, and ho should count it an outrage on our good name if one of them did. But scores of English prisoners in Germany had been foully murdered by typhus 'fever, although tho Germans knew as much about it as wo did, and could mako it absolutely impossible for any of our men to die from the disease. Our men had died in scores, and be put that record along with the worst that the Zeppelins and the submarines had done. This was murder, and it was murderers whom wo had to settle with.