Servi Servorum Dei

Abstract

IT is not only His Holiness the Pope who is servant of God's servants; the title well becomes all who are saving or safeguarding the health of the British Expeditionary Force. To read the medical and surgical history of past wars—the American Civil War, or the Crimea, or the Franco-German War—is more pain than pleasure. To read what our Army Medical Service is doing now—a Committee has just been appointed for the writing of this history—will be not the least of the pleasures of peace. We have a foretaste of it, in the article which was published in the daily papers last week, by “an Eye-Witness present with general headquarters.” He says, to begin with, that a war such as this, with so much hardship and exposure, would have cost our nation, a few years ago, an outbreak of disease that would have decimated our forces. He goes on to say that the low sick-rate in the Army to-day is due, partly, to the diligent instruction given of late years to our men in the first principles of health. “In the main, however, it is due to the preventive measures adopted by the medical service.” And these preventive measures are of two kinds: those which prevent infection from gaining access to our men, and those which strengthen our men to withstand infection.