216 THE ZEMSTVOS DURING THE WAR
insistence upon repeated and simultaneous inoculations amply justi-
fied themselves. This was readily admitted not only by the medical
authorities of the Allied armies, but also by the Paris Academy of
Medicine (May 9, 1916). Successful work at the front was made
possible by the sympathetic attitude of the higher army authorities,
as well as by the loyal cobperation between the army medical service
and the unofficial bodies under the direction of the Zemstvo Union.
In the interior of Russia, however, inoculation made very slow
progress, owing to the lack of coordination in the work of the com-
petent authorities and institutions. In consequence large numbers of
newly mobilized men who had undergone long periods of training in
the interior were sent to reinforce the army at the front without
having been inoculated.?
New Field Hospitals.
At the beginning of 1916 the number of cases of typhoid fever
and cholera had been considerably reduced. The majority of refu-
gees had been moved far into the interior, and the Union’s commit-
tees of the front were now in a position to transfer to the local zem-
stvos a large number of medical institutions originally created
within the war zone for the purpose of combating epidemics. This
measure had become the more urgent since the institutions of the
Union on the western and northern fronts were now confronted with
new tasks. At the close of January, 1916, the Ministry of War re-
quested the Union’s committees of these two fronts to prepare at
once field hospitals with a total capacity of nearly 40,000 beds. It
became necessary within two or three weeks, to erect the huts and
provide the beds required on sites assigned by the military authori-
ties, besides finding adequate staffs. It was intended that some of
these huts should be retained for future use at the more important
railway junctions, whilst the remainder were to be of a merely tem-
porary character. An enemy offensive was expected, with the in-
evitable large number of casualties, yet there was in the immediate
rear of the war zone no adequate number of hospitals for the antici-
pated stream of sick and wounded soldiers.
20 Kratki Obzor Deyatelnosti (Outline) of the Work of the Union of
Zemstvos, Moscow, 1917, pp. 80-81; also Tarasevich in Izvestia (Bulletin)
No. 82, pp. 67-72; also Martsinovsky, in ibid., No. 29, pp. 75-90.
