CHEST-SWELLING DRILL AND
THE " SPECTATOR " EXPERIMENTAL COMPANY. [TO THE EDITOR OF TRH " SP EOPLTOR:1 SIR,—YOU kindly found space on April 14th last for a letter from me telling of the important new departure which Colonel Pollock resolved to make when he began the training of his men at Hounslow,—the abolition of the injurious, though time- honoured, chest-swelling, Betting-up drill. In laying before him the evidence against it, I made the request that to test the matter he would exempt twenty-five of his hundred men from all interference with their natural breathing, adding that it would, of course, be better to exempt them all He replied: "I will do more than you have asked me to do. I will under- take that no breathing exercises whatever shall be performed"; and he remarked that, but for my letter to him, he would have
used these exercises "because they form a part of the regula- tion system." In writing against chest-swelling, what I have
in view is the improvement of the powers of endurance of the men. Colonel Pollock writes to you of the manner in which his men acquitted themselves when required to double back to camp, a distance of about 900 yards, in a single rush. The training is now approaching its conclusion. Will you use your great influence in obtaining a comparative test of physical endurance, to be applied to men taught to swell their chests, as against men who have not been subjected to that test? If Colonel Pollock had acted on the suggestion I made of exempting twenty-five of his men— for I feared asking too much !—there would have been a perfect and unanswerable demonstration of the injury done by chest-swelling. Those of the seventy-five who obeyed the chest-swelling orders would not only be left behind in a race of. nine hundred yards, but would have been so left in a dis- tressed or exhausted condition. My object in writing to you is to press the importance of a real test. Surely it is not for nothing that the Medical Department Blue-book for 1876 found space for a full argument condemning this unnatural system. And may I ask you to bear in mind that the getting together of one hundred chest-expanded recruits to compare with Colonel Pollock's men will imply that they are the survivals of the fittest among a greater number,—invaliding and desertion, brought about by the physical discomfort of breathlessness, accounting for this loss ? I beg to enclose a printed letter from the British Medical Journal, and once again begging your aid for the compassing of the removal of this blot in the training of British soldiers, 1 am, Sir, &c., F. A. DAVY, M.D.,
Lieut.-Colonel, late R.A.M.C.
Northumberland House, Richmond, Surrey.
[We suggest that our correspondent should apply to the War Office with a view to the comparison he desires being made. We do not doubt that Colonel Pollock will allow the Spectator Company to take part in the test.—En. Spectator.]
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