Notes on the History of Military Medicine - Expanded From Two Lectures Delivered at the Medical Field Service School, Carlisle Barracks, Pa;, June 21-22, 1921 #224738

In their present form these chapters, originally printed in the military surgeon during November, 1921 — August, 1922, are an expansion of two lectures delivered at the Medical Field Service School, Carlisle Barracks, Penna, on June 21 — 22, 1921. Designed as they are for the information and instruction of student medical officers at the Army Medical School, they cannot profess to give more than a definitive outline of the history of a great subject. But with the aid of the foot note references, derived from the matchless resources of the Surgeon General's Library, it is conceivable that the senior oficer may be in position to expand the theme indefinitely for purposes of lecturing, writing or otherwise. During the World War the United States Army, particularly its Medical Corps, had an opportunity to achieve great results on a grand scale such as had never been offered it before in all its history. One effect of this great expansion, this unique opportunity to think in large terms, was to dispense, for the time being at least, with certain obsolete or obsolescent conventions of the service which had tended to narrow the viewpoint of the individual and, in extreme cases, demonstrably to engender bitter hatred against the Army in certain quarters. In other words, military discipline is now an affair of handling the individual with such impersonal equity and fairness as to make him a true disciple (discipulus) of the centric ideal, viz., the preservation of our Army for the maintenance of peace and for the defense of our common country in time of war. During the recent war the science of military morale was so effectively developed by one of our medical officers that it became possible to manufacture reliable conduct in men like cotton cloth. The merest glance at these pages will convince any candid reader that the part played by medical personnel in the maintenance of military morale is of extraordinary moment. It was to forward this motif that this book was written, in the hope and belief that a glimpse of the ampler aether which is the history of his pro fession will convince the young medical officer that, in successful military operations of modern type, patriotism is the motor power, and military administration the mechanism by means of which great things are to be accomplished and victories won.