ays, flies; both of
these evils increasing rapidly as the stay on any one spot was
prolonged. My personal experience of rain was small, but I was twice in
camp, once at Orange River and once at Bloemfontein, when very heavy
rain fell, and this was sufficient to make the camps terribly
uncomfortable for a few days.

Under these conditions, as might be expected, until the outbreak of
enteric fever the health of the men was remarkably good, minor ailments
alone prevailing. One of the most troublesome of these was diarrhoea,
which gained the appellation of 'the Modders,' already a classical name
as far as South Africa is concerned. This most frequently, I think,
depended on errors of diet, combined with the swallowing of a large
amount of sand with the food as dust, and in the water drunk. Cases of
severe dysentery, however, were also not very uncommon. Rheumatic pains
were a common ailment, which, considering the dryness of the atmosphere,
would hardly have been expected. Continued fever of a somewhat special
type was not uncommon, and was sometimes spoken of under the name of the
district, sometimes as veldt fever--of this I will say nothing, as
others better fitted to point out its peculiarities will no doubt deal
with it. Enteric fever, our chief scourge, I will pass over for the same
reason. I might, however, remark from the point of view of one not very
experienced in this disease, that in a large number of the fatal cases I
happened to see, the actual cause of death seemed to me to be septicaemia
from absorption from the mouth. The mouths were unusually bad, even
allowing for the often insufficient cleansing that was able to be
carried out, and I was inclined to attribute these in some degree to the
dryness of the atmosphere, which very quickly and effectively dried up
the mucous membrane of the mouth in patients not breathing through the
nose, and encouraged the formation of large cracks. Pneumonia was rare,
and this was rendered the more striking from the comparatively large
number of men who contracted the disease on board ship on the voyage out
from England.

As will be gathered from the above, medical disease seldom called for
the aid of the surgeon. Abdominal section was occasionally considered in
cases of perforation in enteric fever, and was, I believe, a few times
performed, but as far as I know without success. It was also proposed to
treat some of the severe dysentery cases by colotomy, but I never saw
t