The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-06-28
MEXICAN CAMP SANITATION
General Gorgas Says, Army Will Be
 Able to Meet Problems


 The army is in a better position to meet the sanitation problems which it will have to face in an actual invasion of Mexico than it was in 1SsS in the opinion of Brig Gen. William c. Gorgas, surgeon general, United States army. Gen eral Gorgas has discussed these problems in The Engineering Record.
 He estimates such an army as might be mobilized for service in Mexico at | 10000 regular troops and twice as many volunteers. The regulars having from one to three years of experience would know how to take care of themselves in l field and camp.
 1 Among the volunteers" General Cor gas says. some considerable experience exists as a result of maneuver camps and the Spanish war, many veterans of that war being in the militia. The proportion of recruits will, however. be 90 to f5 per cent of the total strength. as far as ex- perience in the field is concerned. There will be. therefore a considerable propor- tion of green men to be taught camp sanitation as well as given military in- struction. Much of this will be given in con- centration camps. Fortunately most of the officers of the volunteers will be men who are impressed with the value of san itation in the field. They and the reg ular officers and older soldiers will quick ly instruct the new men in the habits so essential to health in camp.
 There exists, then, a yeast to leaven the whole that was absent in 1Ses Since that eventful year the officers of the medical department of the army have been studying and practicing military hy- giene and sanitation with brilliant re- suits, as demonstrated in the two large n m In n for year at a time with a sick rate lower than that at the average post
 Better yet, the officers of the line i'm pressed with the value of the lessons in camp sanitation, have been enthusias- tic supporters of these advances and are hardly second to medical officers in their knowledge and experience in such mat ters The army, then. Is in an entirely different position than at the outbreak of the Spanish war. The 10000 cases of typhoid that then puzzled and distressed the people of this country will not re- appear as spectres in our camps as a sign of sanitary incompetence
 'Anti-typhoid inoculation, which has been in vogue in the army since 1909, and which so efficiently protected it in 1913. that there was but once case among the inoculated in the army of 90,000, is to be trusted to keep our camps free of this disease so fatal to armies of the past
 Yellow fever is robbed of much of its terror by the fact learned in 1898 by Reed and his devoted band, which taught us the means of transmission and conse- quently the manner of avoiding it.
 Thus forewarned we are forearmed and enter any campaign confident of our ability and in the sanitary training of the line to feel that we can exist in the campaign in a state of 'hygienic com petence' that the disabilities of the war will be limited, for the first time in the history of the new world, to wounds and that diseases will not kill more than bullets. The American people will have what they should have for the generous support given every year-the most effi- cient army of it's size in the world"