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Bázár is really a large and important town containing 20,000 inhabitants, and
though I fully acknowledge the devotion, energy and capacity displayed by the
very zealous Cantonment Magistrate at present in charge, yet I am sure if there
were a Health Officer appointed he would have ample work to occupy his whole
time.
There is also a considerable urban population in the Sadar Bázárs of
Belgaum, Deesa, Nasirabad and Mhow, and also at Karáchi, though this is at
present unfortunately not under military control. If such an officer were appoint-
ed at each of these places I have no doubt that great improvements would
be effected.
Taxation having, I am glad to say, been at length imposed on the residents
in Cantonments it seems to me that a small corporation might be established,
consisting of Commanding Officers to represent the Military element and of
rate-payers to represent the non-official classes. The Officer Commanding the
Station would still be President, and the corporate body would hold quarterly
meetings to decide questions of general administration, to sanction expenditure,
pass budgets, &c.
I am sure the time has come when some such scheme is needed, and if
Government were pleased to sanction it being tried in Poona in the first
instance, it could, if found successful, be extended to other stations.
There is a point regarding Military stations which I think it is desirable to
bring to especial notice, and that is, the necessity for establishing in each station
a laundry where the clothes of soldiers should be washed, dried and ironed.
At present the regimental Dhobies carry away the dirty clothes to the river or
well for washing and afterwards remove them to their own houses for ironing,
&c. The Officer Commanding the 17th Lancers recognises the danger of this,
and insists on all the clothes being ironed in one of the regimental buildings. I
well remember the condition of some of the houses in the Dhobi Ghát at
Karáchi when cholera was prevailing among the Dhobies there resident and
I cannot but regard existing arrangements as likely to spread disease.
The bedding and all clothes that have been used or worn by any soldier
suffering from enteric fever, as well as from certain other diseases, should be
exposed to hot dry air at a high temperature in a disinfecting chamber. There
is not a single disinfecting chamber in the Presidency, and I can speak from
personal knowledge of the difficulty experienced by medical officers in getting
clothing, bedding, &c., disinfected. Until a disinfecting chamber can be built
I think these articles should be, if possible, baked in an oven, or, if there is no
oven, that they should be boiled with some disinfectant, of which chloride of
zinc is probably the best.
All barrack-rooms from which cases of enteric fever have been admitted into
hospital should, after disinfection by burning sulphur, be lime-washed ; and I
especially recommend that all latrines be, as a matter of regular routine, dis-
infected and lime-washed in a similar manner once a month.
I also recommend that a record of the disease statistics regarding cholera,
enteric fever, malarial fever, dysentery and diarrhœa be kept for individual barracks
in each lines and that the disease statistics be kept by corps as well as by stations.
It was for this purpose that, while acting as Sanitary Commissioner, I asked Govern-
ment to introduce the sanitary reports for each station. It will be of little use
to keep the statistics by the station as a whole. What is required is much more
minute sub-division, so that we may be able to see what lines in the station
are healthy or the reverse, and not only this, but what barracks are more
unhealthy than others, and in this way to localize disease.*
The individual care of the young soldier is another matter of the highest im-
portance. Medical officers are sometimes distressed to find that men suffering from
enteric fever have not reported themselves sick until they were utterly unable to
keep out of hospital any longer, some of whom die a few days after admission,
and it is clear that these men must have had the disease on them for days before
they came to hospital. "It is not uncommon," according to Dr. Murchison, "for
patients to continue at their ordinary employment for the first week or ten days, or
* Since the above was written I have received instructions from the Quarter-Master General to
prepare forms which will embody this information.