THE CLEANLY BRITON

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17729, 13 September 1919, Page 7

THE CLEANLY BRITON

WAR WON BY HEALTH. It is duo to the hygiene of the army and tho health of our troops that wo won the war," declared Sir Anthony Bowlbv Surgeon-m-Ordinary to the King, in an address on "Experimental Medicine and the biclc and Wounded in tho War," before the Research Defenco Society recently. Viscount Ivnutsford. who presided, said that to-day there wero comparatively few people who doubted the necessity for experiments on animals, and there wero very few pooplo who doubted that tho experiments wero carried on mercifully and without pain. The wholo medical and surgical history of the war was a most complete and final answer to the anti-viviscction agitation. Of course, nothing would end that agitation; sentiment was very much stronger than reason, and it always would be. Nobody would stand for one moment tho torturing of animals for any purpose, but that appeal to sentiment was the only strength of tho other side. It only created a smile to talk of Pasteur as a charlatan, and Lister, of all men, as a brute. That sort of tiling did not pay now, and so it was dropped. Thero had never been a Government which had spoken out with a less uncertain voice upon that matter than tho present Government. They had spoken, out, not only_ on experiments on animals but in protecting the men carrying out the experiments. Sir Anthony Bowlby, in his address, said tho British army had turned out to be tho healthiest in the world. The average Briton, whether private or officer, was naturally cleanly. In the British Army Medical Corps there was a body of trained experts on hygiene unequalled in any other country. By lectures they hud been tho means of spreading hygienio practices. The British Army had bccome a healthy army and.had consequently won tho war. Wo had terrible losses from enterio fever in the South Afnea war, but tho great improvement effected in that respect in the recent war was due to tho prophylactio injection of serum. Hie Irench army at the beginning of the war had a great number of uninoculated men, and they lost nearly 60 000 of their strength. With regard to the terrible disease of tetanus, tho supply of tho necessary serum depended on the number of horses treated by vivisection. They had to wait for supplies of the serum from America, and in August, September, and October, 1914, when tho troops wero not inoculated, the amount of tetanus was anpalling. When they wero able to inoculate practically every man an improvement set in, and the ratio in tho number of cases of tetanus to the number of wounded was about six times as hitrh in September 1914 as in November, 1914, and nine times as high as in December of that year.