Lectures, reports, letters, and papers on sanitary questions / by Robert Rawlinson.

  • Rawlinson, Robert.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures, reports, letters, and papers on sanitary questions / by Robert Rawlinson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    152/164 page 146
    Any huts sent out from England should have floors raised above the surface-soil. They should be so secured as not to be blown over, and there should be ventilation the entire length of the ridge. Patent felt covering, it must be remembered, if water-tight, is also air-tight. This was not remembered when the huts were sent to the Crimea, and fever was a consequence. Temporary shelter may be made by constructing rude open-fronted sheds—a tree-trunk, supported four or five feet from the ground, with branches sloped from it to the ground, beneath which men may obtain shelter. I have been in an Arctic forest with a body of Swedes who every night made such form of shelter, and did not take long about it. These men had also unroasted coffee-berries, but they had also a frying-pan and fire. The coffee-berries were spread in the frying- pan, held over the fire and roasted, crushed in the same pan by a flat stone. Water was then poured in and allowed to simmer, and then the coffee was drunk out of the same pan. I thought at the - time that I had never in my life drunk better coffee. A Swede, with his axe, can make himself at home in the forest. A drinking- cup is made of birch-bark in a few minutes. A strip is cut from round a tree—say, six inches deep—which is like a sheet of thick paper. This is folded like a sugar-loaf. A slip of birch twig split at one end slipped in becomes a handle, and in less time than I have been describing, a useful drinking-cup has been formed, or a vessel to dip out of the river with. The tente dabri has been sug- gested for use in South Africa. I sincerely hope, for the sake of the men, that no such tent will be adopted. I saw them in the Crimea, and wondered how medical men could ever have sanctioned them. Think of a tent which three men carry with their other empedimenta, which, when set up, forms a triangle, having sides of about 18 inches or 2 feet when put up entire, and beneath which the men creep! If skin-and-lung-tainted air is deadly, what must it be beneath such a contrivance? A man would have about as much fresh air if shut up in a clock-case laid flat. Men must live to fight, and as fighting forms the practical part of a soldier’s life, means to live, and to live in health, should be studied. The working knowledge and power of a regiment should be as much taught as the fighting knowledge. There should be working-drill—as trenching, well-boring, hut-building, and rough-and-ready cooking. If English soldiers are to live in South Africa they must be taught to help themselves in some practicable way. Ae who have learnt to work can teach other men to work, so that an English force which had learnt work at drill would be enabled to teach and direct the natives. The Roman legions, I am satisfied, were so taught, and so exercised their knowledge. The masonry of the Roman wall from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Carlisle was of such a character that the natives could be made to do most of the heavy labour. In the Crimea we lost the finest army England ever sent out of the country, because it did not work, or was not directed how to work properly. Must we lose another army from the same cause?
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3