XIX 



PREVENTIVE MEDICINE AND THE WAR l 

 VICTOR C. VAUGHAN 



educated man, civilian or military in his training and 

 life, now questions the importance of keeping the soldier 

 free from infection. That health is at all times a nation's 

 greatest asset and disease its greatest liability has become a 

 recognized truism. Never in the history of the world has 

 preventive medicine had so great an opportunity to demonstrate 

 its value in the service of mankind and that it has not failed 

 in this demonstration all admit. From all parts of the earth, 

 bearing every known infection, millions of men have been 

 assembled and disease has at no time and in no way become a 

 deciding factor in any military enterprise. The mobilization of 

 raw untrained men,and their hurried transformation into effec- 

 tive soldiers, has always been accompanied by marked increase 

 in morbidity and mortality. The assembly of young men in 

 camps acts like a drag-net bringing to a central point all infec- 

 tions prevalent in the areas from which these men come. The 

 wider the area, the larger the number of those brought together, 

 the greater the susceptibility of the individuals constituting the 

 assembly, the more closely they are crowded together and the 

 more intimate their contact, the larger the number of bearers 

 of infections, the more virulent the disease-causing organisms 

 brought into the camps, the greater will be the morbidity and 



1 For the scientific details upon which this Chapter is founded see 

 papers by Col. Victor C. Vaughan and Capt. Geo. T. Palmer in the 

 "Journal of Lab. and Clinical Medicine," August, 1918, and July and 

 August, 1919. 



