WATER DRINKING.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4233, 14 October 1874, Page 3

WATER DRINKING.

The I.Tome Nexus of 10th July contains the following :—“ It may be remembered that on the evacuation of France by the German troops last summer, an Fnglish correspondent brought to notice the extraordinary sufferings of a Bavarian regiment which moved by Sedan, which had no fewer than seven men brought into that place insensible from the effects of heat, of whom two died the same night. The discussion aroused on the subject had the effect of calling to it the special attention of German medical men, and more particularly of those who had served in the field. The general testimony of these appeal's to be to the effect that the Prussian system, of enforcing entire abstinence from liquids throughout the march is chargeable with the chief part, or even the whole, of the evil. The almost invariable practice in 1870 was, on halting near water, to stop all access to it by a guard, the old notion of the service being that a heated man must never be allowed to chill himself by drinking. So stringently was this rule maintained, and so hardly did it press on the soldiers, that the chief instances of open violation of discipline reported during the campaign are said to have arisen from efforts made by thirsty soldiers to force their guards. But the fact is, according to the present view, that the non-liquid system may answer for a man in perfect training ; but the ordinary private on the march perspires heavily, and his body cannot support the constant exhaustion of moisture without suffering. In fact, the soit of heat apoplexy from wMch the troops suffered, while civilian pedestrians escape it, is believed to have been directly caused by the adherence to this mistaken practice. Such is the present theory of the best German medical men, and it is in accordance with it that the chief military journal of Berlin has recently published conspicuously the orders on this head issued by General Herzog to the Swiss troops called out in 1870. The Germans, it is true, despise the semi-civil forces of the litule republic as a fighting power, but they have the good sense to acknowledge that, as a rule, the Swiss are better strains than their own peasantry, and that their precautions on the march may be worth study. And the Swiss Staff used exactly the opposite plan to the traditional Prussian one. They not merely caused every man to carry his water-bottle, with free leave to use it, but mounted orderlies were despatched ahead of every column of infantry when on the march for the express purpose of warning the inhabitants of each village ■ to place vessels of fresh water ready for the soldiers to quench their thirst during the brief halt made for that purpose in passing through/'