anization of the army in mind it may be seen that
a small mobile laboratory might be of great practical service to the
army in the field. Under the conditions which exist in the present
war, the army itself is not very mobile, nor is it necessary for the
laboratory to be, but it is of great importance to have a car which
will permit of the area being covered quickly should a specimen,
sample or investigation be required. The car is the really essential
mobile part of the unit.

Our laboratory had charge of both the bacteriological and hygiene work
of a given area; it was the only laboratory that did both types of
work. When our apparatus had been unpacked and set up in the old ball
room of the Hotel de Ville it made quite an imposing show, and after
we saw what equipment the other laboratories had we were decidedly
proud of ours.

Our first bit of work proved to be the examination of a number of
soldiers who had been in contact with a case of cerebro-spinal
meningitis, to detect "carriers" of the specific germ. Then material
of all sorts began to come in for examination from the casualty
clearing stations, field ambulances, sanitary and medical officers,
rest stations and other places. Most of the routine bacteriological
work proved to be of much the same nature as that done in a health
laboratory at home, and consisted of examinations to detect some of
the ordinary communicable diseases such as diphtheria, cerebro-spinal
meningitis, typhoid fever, malaria, dysentery, tuberculosis, and
venereal diseases.

Should a case of diphtheria, for example, be found in a soldier, all
his immediate friends and companions with whom he had been in contact,
would be swabbed to see whether they were infected. Those found to be
infected would be removed from the army at once.

In a case of suspected typhoid fever the examination of serum, blood
and excreta would be necessary to determine whether the case were
really typhoid or not. If found to be typhoid the laboratory would be
called upon to try to discover the source of the infection. The same
general methods hold good in other epidemic diseases where the
laboratory is capable of making the diagnosis, to see whether any
danger lurks in "contacts" or "carriers" and to find the source of the
infection where possible.

Very frequently material from wounds is sent in by the hospital
surgeons to see whether wounds are infected. The soil of Flanders has
been liberally manured for hun