The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-09-12
BIG MEN VS. LITTLE MEN.
Superior Endurance of Those of Small
 Stature.


 Stature.
 When the war is all over and the
 Army and Navy departments get down
 to gathering and comparing statistics
 on fatalities caused by disease and
 wounds," said naval surgeon of great
 experience, who is now in Washington
 on furlough, II am confident it will be
 found that the small, slight men who
 have been through the campaigns, both
 by field and flood, will be found to
 have been the best endurers of hard
 ships. This is fact that I have often
 observed. The big, hard-mucled, we'll
 developed men go to pieces under se-
 were hardship and succumb much
 quicker to epidemic diseases, as well
 as to the ordinary diseases of life, than
 do the small, frail looking chaps. Of
 course, no really frail men get into the
 army or navy, but the service has al-
 ways been filled with plenty of men
 under ordinary size, whose appearance
 with their clothes on causes men not familiar with the subject to wonder
 how they ever passed the physical ex-
 aminations required by the army and
 navy. These undersized, but perfectly
 sound men, both in the army and navy,
 are best for hard service. They may
 not be able to do such big things, but for long service full of trouble and
 worriment and genuine hardship they
 are incomparably better than the big
 fellows, who look as if they might be
 able to outlast any three of the small CT men. I've often noticed that in practice marches by naval landing
 parties the little fellows have invar- iably the best of the argument when 1t comes to heavy, double-tine work un-
 der hot, tropical suns. I've seen huge sailors and marines drop out of line in sets of fours under such circum- stances, while the small trig blue jackets and sea soldiers stand to the game through everything, and rarely fall to the rear Army surgeons tell
 me, too, that in the rought campaign ing in the west the smaller men have , invariably shown themselves to be bet ter resisters of hardship than the big fellows. They say that among the doubhboys or infantrymen, when a big practice IldTCll IS Ill plUEISSS tit iHeil
 of big stature and flesh and muscle are always among the first to throw i up their hands and ask for transporta- tion in commissary and quartermaster wagons, while the small men trudge on doggedly.
 Another thing the army surgeons | tell me that might seem peculiar to | those who haven't been in any mili- | tary service is that the soldiers recruit 1 ed from the cities are invariably better endurers of hard campaigning than the soldier recruited from the country dis | tricts. It might naturally be thought l that countrymen, used to open aired work and hopping over furrowed fields, would prove themselves away ahead l of the city lads when it came to keep l ing in line on forty mile day march es over western country, but the army surgeons say that the countryiTlen are I the first to complain of sore feet and | to cast their eyes longingly upon the | wagons and ambulances at the rear. | I'd rather have command of com pany of Bowery boys and city wharf rats at any time said one of the army 1 surgeons to me not long ago, than a fit-out of big raw lads just off the | farm If the country boys go sore they 1 don't apepar to have the nerve to keep their heads closed about itand wait for | their soreness to pass off, but they 1 break fo rthe sick report right away. | The city lads get their teeth down hard and grin and bear it.
 l Aboard ship in the navy I've noticed | ever since i first went to sea, which was matter of nearly thirty years l ago, that when a big bluejacket gets | down sick in the sick bay and small | CT man is taken with the same trouble | that ails the big man the smaller chap l invariably becomes convalescent long before the big man begins to mend | Tn cases where ships I have been attached to have become afflicted with | epidemics and half ships company | has gone down I've observed that the | chances of the smaller men recovering | have always been almost twice as great | as the chances of the big mem This l is particularly true of the levers that | hit ships companies in tropical waters. | A large, heavy man is twice as liable | to get the fever known as coast fever, , | for example, as small man, and he is l twice as liable to die from it. too. For l example, about fifteen years ago an oId-navy wind -jammer I was attached i to was working her way up the coast of Central America. when pretty near | ly all hands got the coast fever. The | big men were the first to get into the | sick bay, but the disease was of a pe- | culiarly violent character on that oc- | casion, and within a week after the | disease came over the side about three 1 quarters of the ships company, fore | and aft, boys and men, were on the | flats of their backs.
 "The first men to die were the huge,
 knotty mucled firemen. We lost half a | dozne of them, and then the big down.
 east deckhands-men that could handle
 a barrel of flour as easily as a washer
 woman manipulates a flatiron-began | to go. Very few of the small men died | although nearly all of them had the
 fever badly. Out of the twenty-seven coal passers aboard, eight were huge | men and the remaining nineteen were | of ordinary size or under the ordinary size. Seven of the big coal-passers had | to be buried at sea, and not a man of Puv E,IlwOod'S COcoa. coStr ,,o+bip.-