PREVENTIVE MEDICINE AND THE WAR 337 



tween the noses of adjoining neighbors either laterally or from 

 front to rear was less than 26 inches. The whole atmosphere 

 was filled with the spray of coughing and no radical changes 

 would have been secured by removing the walls and roof of 

 the hall. In other words, men may be dangerously crowded, 

 so far as exposure to disease is concerned, while out of doors, 

 and moreover, camp crowding, when new men are being made 

 into seasoned soldiers as quickly as possible, is a necessity and 

 the morbidity and mortality resulting therefrom must be ac- 

 cepted as one of the conditions imposed upon itself by any 

 nation which neglects military preparation until the last mo- 

 ment and then hastens to do what could be better done without 

 such haste. Our draft men were assembled directly from their 

 homes in their ordinary clothing, bearing multiple and varied 

 infective agents, the clean brought into contact with the un- 

 clean, crowded on to troop trains and sent to camp. Not a 

 troop train reached Camp Wheeler in the fall of 1917 which 

 did not have one or more cases of fully developed measles, 

 with unknown numbers of exposures, when it reached camp. 

 The control of infectious diseases under these conditions is a 

 different problem from that which the civilian health officer 

 has to deal with in a more stabile population. These men 

 should have been assembled in groups of not more than 30, 

 bathed and barbered, clothed in sterilized uniform, held in 

 quarantine for 14 days and sent to camp in these small groups 

 and then held under quarantine for at least 10 days longer, 

 before being allowed to mingle with other groups. But the 

 exigencies of the situation did not admit of this procedure. 

 The purpose was of necessity to convert civilians into effective 

 soldiers as soon as possible and not to make a demonstration in 

 preventive medicine and this was done more effectively and 

 with less loss in sickness and death than has been accomplished 

 in any previous war. At the beginning of the Civil War com- 

 panies and larger organizations had to be disbanded and sent 

 home temporarily after assembly, on account of outbreaks 

 of infectious diseases. 



