ARMIES AS SANATARIUMS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XVIII, Issue 12070, 25 October 1913, Page 3 (Supplement)

ARMIES AS SANATARIUMS.

Marriage as a measure of health has recently been advocated by authorities who .show statisiically that bachelors and maids die earlier than we'dcled couples. .As a further precaution against disease, we are now tdM,' we should join the army. Soldiers are much healthier than civilians, as they' are cared for by a Government whose interest it is, in pounds, shillings and ■pence, that they should keep in good condition. In an editorial on "iYlilitary Service and Public Health," in the Army and Navy Journal (New York), Dr Piussau, chief of the'; French army medical service, is quoted as-de-monstrating '-'with great logic and clearness'' that the Frenchman's army years are the happiest in his life. ' "We read: "In the first place,- the food of the soldier has been most carefully considered and regulated with proper regard to obtaining the highest degree of efficiency from an individual fed on a scientific dietary. Since 190-5, when the doctors recommended a better cooked and more varied diet, a system of cookery .instruction'has been a logical outcome of the recommendation. Arising out of a similar regard for efficiency, the clothing of the soldier is supervised and is designed with a view to best protecting him in all weathers; daily habits of cleanliness and personal hygiene are enforced; and, above all, suitable prophylactic measures are taken to protect him against infectious diseases.

"Dr Puissan considers these in detail, and then invites attention to their results as expressed .in figures. The death-rate for the whole of the population is a little over twenty per- 'thousand, and these deaths are, of course, distributed in varying percentages oyer different ages; but an average -deathrate for the civil population between the ages of twenty and 1 twenty-two is eight per thouVahtk Now, for the'home/ army of France the death-rate'is less than four per thousand; 3J-.per thousand is the average over a ten-year period. ... . In''short, there is less risk of dving in the army than out of it.

"This general-conclusion, the London Morning Post points out, is confirmed by the facts, shown by precise statistics, that epidemics are rarer in the array, and that while the army sometimes ' catches' an epidemic from the civil population, it seldom passes an epidemic on. The 'epidemic is noted and stifled within the' army's bound; aries. From these and other considerations, Dr Puissan's' contention that the French Army, equipped with a system of applied hygiene and protected by careful preventive treatment, is a nucleus of good health and a school of sound hygiene for tiie whole nation, seems- amply justified. "Although, perhaps, beyond the scope, of Dr Puissan's able paper, we can not but wish that he hud spoken of the great benefit to the nation of. having thousands of young men returning each year from the army to their home communities, taking with them the very latest ideas as to sanitation, food, arid general hygiene. . . . . '•'One has but to study the result 'upon the health of the world of the work of the surgeons of the United States Army in Cuba and Panama to realise ithe far-reaching influence of medical sanitation upon mankind in general. By the. experiments with mosquitoes in Cuba after the SpanishAmerican "War and in Panama since the American work on the canal began, the peril of yellow fever has been banished from the former country and the terrors of the tropical climate have been chased from the Isthmus, so long considered the plague-spot of the world and so Ion? sending broadcast over the world its shiploads of deadly diseases. Ship-quarantining ■gainst Cuba and the Isthmus has km"; since ceased, and foreign rountries no longer look -with fear upon vessels which arrive in their ports from the former homes of yellow fever. From the island of Cuba and from Panama object-lessons in the virtues of militarv sanitation must spread around the world for the ultimate betterment of the human race. ....

"Back into the homes of the land in France, as in every country, where there is a. we'-11-organised army, go manv men each year at the expiration of their terms of service, and these take with them a knowledge of things as they ought to be." -