SICK AND WOUNDED 121

diseases; and from the publication of instructions for the improvement
 of the water supply in the rural districts and for the destruction
 of insect pests that spread contagion to the actual organization
of special epidemic detachments. We find some of the provinces (for
instance, Voronezh) fully prepared to meet epidemics, while others
did very little or practically nothing. There can be no doubt that
the measures adopted by the zemstvos and towns were to the benefit
of the population, for everything was cleaned up and put in order.
However, these benefits were not everywhere commensurate with the
expenditure incurred. Many of these measures, if they were to be
properly carried out, would have required large expenditure and
years of persistent effort; but when the funds devoted to them were
so limited and everything was done in such a hurry, the results were
bound to be insignificant.
In one respect, however, the zemstvos undoubtedly met with success:
 with the funds allotted by the Government, they built hundreds
 of well-equipped isolation barracks intended to be used also
in peace-time as part of a network of zemstvo hospitals to be further
developed. It is to be regretted that government credits, as well as
appropriations by the Zemstvo Union, often came only at the close
of the building season (the appropriations of the Zemstvo Union
were made only in August, 1915), and the buildings were erected
too late. In many places they could not be completed until the summer
 of 1916, and this only with heavy excess of expenditure over
estimates, owing to the rising prices of materials and labor.

Zemstvo Hospitals for Special Purposes: Lunatic Asylums.
Already in July, 1914, that is even before the Zemstvo Union was
organized, the Ministry of the Interior addressed a recommendation
to the institutions of local government to provide a certain number
of beds in their lunatic asylums for mentally deranged soldiers. The
care of such patients en route from the front was left to the Red
Cross Society. Early in the War the Russian Society of Psychiatrists
 and Neuropathologists submitted to the Zemstvo Union an
elaborate plan for the evacuation and treatment of such cases. It
was proposed that this work should be united under the control of
the unions. A carefully worked out estimate was also presented.