The Health of the Expeditionary Force

Abstract

WE may well be thankful that the news from the Front continues to report favourably of the general health of our men. It need scarcely be said that the labour of housing and treating so many severely wounded is colossal; and we know, all of us, that the proportion of heavily infected wounds is unhappily and inevitably high. Indeed, the wonder is, that every wound is not heavily infected: for we may be sure that no clothes, no hands, no skin, can be clean in action: we must not talk of “clean wounds,” where complete cleanliness is impossible: we must only say that some wounds healed well, in spite of the conditions under which they were made.