CAMP DISEASES, disorders common to camp life and more or less incidental to the con ditions of active military service, which are often such as to increase the virulence of ordinary diseases. They are generally of epidemic and infectious type, due in large measure to overcrowding and uncleanliness. The formerly dreaded scourge known as camp fever, or typhus, is now easily controlled by keeping the men free from the body lice which carry the disease from one map to another. Improper food, exposure to wet and to ex tremes of temperature, hard muscular labor, un hygienic surroundings and immoral or intem perate habits, contribute to the general condi tions in which disease flourishes. Some of the troublesome infectious diseases of military life are: Asiatic cholera, bubonic plague, cerebro spinal meningitis, diarrhea, dysentery, influenza, malaria, measles, mumps, typhoid fever and tuberculosis. Typhoid fever has been enor
mously decreased through inoculation with anti-typhoid serum. Alcoholism and venereal diseases depend on personal habits; bronchitis, frost-bite, pneumonia, rheumatism, snow-blind ness and sunstroke come from exposure. Scurvy was formerly common, but it is now not often met with, owing to scientific feeding. From forced marches or severe exertion the modern soldier often suffers from heart-trouble, which often permanently incapacitates him for further service. However, the medical corps of modern armies arc so efficient that the propor tion of cases of sickness and of deaths resulting therefrom is less than in most well-organized communities at home, owing doubtless to the fact that in the army the orders of the medical staff are compulsory.