At Bloemfontein Alone, As Many As Fifty Men
Died In One Day, And More Than 1000 New Graves In The Cemetery
Testify To The Severity Of The Epidemic.
No men in the campaign
served their country more truly than the officers and men of the
medical service,
Nor can any one who went through the epidemic
forget the bravery and unselfishness of those admirable nursing
sisters who set the men around them a higher standard of devotion
to duty.
Enteric fever is always endemic in the country, and especially at
Bloemfontein, but there can be no doubt that this severe outbreak
had its origin in the Paardeberg water. All through the campaign,
while the machinery for curing disease was excellent, that for
preventing it was elementary or absent. If bad water can cost us
more than all the bullets of the enemy, then surely it is worth our
while to make the drinking of unboiled water a stringent military
offence, and to attach to every company and squadron the most rapid
and efficient means for boiling it - for filtering alone is useless.
An incessant trouble it would be, but it would have saved a
division for the army. It is heartrending for the medical man who
has emerged from a hospital full of water-born pestilence to see a
regimental watercart being filled, without protest, at some
polluted wayside pool. With precautions and with inoculation all
those lives might have been saved. The fever died down with the
advance of the troops and the coming of the colder weather.
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