Our unit and the Red Cross ran a quarantine hospital together.  It was originally the state cafe and lay in the park of the watering-place.  Near by were the sulphur baths.  We ripped out the stuffy little wooden dressing-rooms, to the joy of the bath attendant, who possessed the facsimile of Tolstoi’s face, and with the debris we built a large shed outside for the reception of the wounded.

In the early days they came in large batches from other hospitals, pathetic septic cases, their lives ruined for want of proper care.  We put their clothes in bags for future disinfecting, and the men, mildly perplexed, were bathed, shaved, and sent to the “clearing-house,” as it was called.  Those who developed typhus went to the barracks, and the rest were drafted to the various hospitals in the village.

The clothes were first sulphurized to kill the lice, and then, until Dr. Boyle’s disinfector appeared, boiled.  This was important, as typhus is propagated by infected lice.  Even forty-eight hours of sulphur did not destroy the nits.  One day the sulphur-room was opened after twenty-four hours.  Live lice were discovered congregated round the tops of the bags.  Jan put some in a bottle.  They immediately fought each other, tooth and nail, rolling and scrambling in a mass just like a rugby-football scrum, and continued the fight for twelve hours at least, thus proving that the scientific writer who says that the louse is a delicate creature and only lives a few hours off the body can know little of the Serbian breed.

The town, when we arrived, was a bouquet of assorted and nasty smells, of which the authorities seemed proud.  We cleaned up the streets by running a little artificial river down the gutter.  Mr. Berry had the chief of the police sacked and instituted a sort of sanitary vigilance committee.  We took over the local but very primitive sewage works—­a field into which all the filth of the town was drained.

The slaughter-house was discovered.  It was an old wooden shed built over the lower end of the stream which washed the village from end to end, draining successively the typhus barracks, the baths, and all the hospitals.  The shed itself was old and worm-eaten.  The walls were caked with the blood of years, yet the meat was always hung against them after having been well soused in the filthy water.  Mr. Berry decided to build a new one:  some of the money was subscribed through Mr. Blease by the Liverpool Liberal Club; the rest Mr. Berry paid himself.  At once the state began to quarrel with the commune as to the ownership of the proposed treasure.  So the smells disappeared and the town engineer was furious, saying he would “Put all right” when we left.

Luckily one of the chief men in the town had lived in America and knew the value of cleanliness.  Mr. Berry was offered an honorary Colonelcy; but he refused, saying he would prefer to be made sanitary officer for the town.