From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 16 January 1915:
Friday’s Times contains on its “leader” page an appeal to our soldiers by Sir William Osier in regard to inoculation against typhoid. He tells the soldiers in simple but stirring language that it is their bounden duty to keep themselves in as perfect a state of health as possible, and reminds them that their worst foes are those of their own camp—the foes of disease. He recalls the fact that in South Africa the bacilli of disease killed twice as many men as did the bullets of the Boers. He next goes on to point out how inoculation safeguards men from the terrible dangers of enteric, and how alight is the indisposition caused by inoculation. When twenty-two thousand Canadians were vaccinated for enteric only twenty-two had symptoms other than malaise and headache. Sir William Osier ends by asking the soldiers whether they will believe the statements of misguided cranks who are trying to prevent inoculation, or will hearken to the men who have devoted their lives to the service of humanity and who have no wish in the matter other than the soldier’s good. Will they put the risk of costly illness, and possibly untimely death, against a transient indisposition?
We will say again what we have said so often in these columns—that it is nothing less than a scandal that the soldier on duty should be allowed to refuse cover against enteric. No one dreams of allowing him the option of taking the protection of the trench or remaining exposed to the enemy’s fire in the open. Why should we let him indulge his laziness, his ignorance, or his “fussiness” and refuse to take cover against the deadly bacilli? Why, again, should we allow the busybodies who try to persuade the soldier not to protect himself against typhoid to go unchecked? If the Government want something to suppress, why not suppress the anti-inoculation crusade? To do that would be far better business than censoring the recruiting statistics.
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