"We are not likely to have to fight three scourges, typhus, malaria, and cholera, though the possibility of the last has to be considered. But there remain dysentery, pneumonia, and enteric. "Dysentery has been for centuries one of the most terrible of camp diseases, killing thousands, and, in its prolonged damage to health, it is one of the most fatal of foes to armies. So far as we know, it is conveyed by water, and only by carrying out strictly, under all circumstances, the directions about boiling water, can it be prevented. It is a disease which, even under the best of circumstances, cannot always be prevented; but with care there should never again be widespread outbreaks in camps themselves. "Pneumonia is a much more difficult disease to prevent. Many of us, unfortunately, carry the germ with us. In these bright days all goes well in a holiday camp like this; but when the cold and the rain come, and the long marches, the resisting forces of the body are lowered, the enemy, always on the watch, overpowers the guards, rushes the defenses, and attacks the lungs. Be careful not to neglect coughs and colds. A man in good condition should be able to withstand the wettings and exposures that lower the system, but in a winter campaign, pneumonia causes a large amount of sickness and is one of the serious enemies of the soldier. "Above all others one disease has proved most fatal in modern warfare--enteric, or typhoid fever. Over and over again it has killed thousands before they ever reached the fighting line. The United States troops had a terrible experience in the Spanish-American War. In six months, between June and November, among 107,973 officers and men in 92 volunteer regiments, 20,738, practically one fifth of the entire number, had typhoid fever, and 1580 died. The danger is chiefly from persons who have already had the disease and who carry the germs in their intestines, harmless to them, but capable of infecting barracks or camps. It was probably by flies and by dust carrying the germs that the bacilli were so fatal in South Africa. Take to heart these figures: there were 57,684 cases of typhoid fever, of which 19,454 were invalided, and 8022 died. More died from the bacilli of this disease than from the bullets of the Boers. Do let this terrible record impress upon you the importance of carrying out with religious care the sanitary regulations.