THE NEED FOR A NATIONAL ANTHROPOMETRIC 



SURVEY 



General averages of height, weight and chest expansion- for a hetero- 

 geneous mass of men are as useless as general averages of wages, 

 prices, etc., which are inapplicable as a rule to individual cases. The in- 

 vestigations by Gould during the Civil War constitute for this reason an 

 extremely valuable basis of trustworthy information concerning the 

 physical characteristics of American manhood with a due regard to 

 race. If corresponding information could have been obtained in 

 response to the urgent appeal * of the Committee on Anthropology of 

 the National Research Council and other interests concerned with the 

 practical use of such data, there would have been secured a proper basis 

 for comparison of the past with the present, and extremely important 

 questions concerning national vitality, physical progress or deterioration, 

 etc., would have been brought measurably nearer to a successful conclu- 

 sion than is now likely to be the case for many years to come. The ex- 

 pense involved would have been slight, the additional labor would have 

 been of no material significance, the standard instruments required 

 would have been useful for the future, and the slight amount of pre- 

 liminary scientific training would have materially increased the ability 

 of the medical examiner charged with the highly responsible duty to so 

 measure and examine the recruit or the conscript that no injustice would 

 be done to the nation or to himself in his wrongful acceptance or rejec- 

 tion for military service. The practice at the present time in the prelimi- 

 nary examination of recruits and even in their subsequent examination 

 by medical men falls often far short of the required high standard de- 

 manded by urgent military and general considerations. The extensive 

 literature of the subject bears intrinsic evidence of superficial consider- 

 ation, with the one important exception of the work by Sir William Ait- 

 ken, on "The Growth of the Recruit and New Soldier, with a View to a 

 Judicious Selection of 'Growing Lads' for the Army, and a Regulated 

 System of Training for the Recruits," published in 1887, which is not 

 critically referred to by a single American authority on military hygiene 

 or the army medical service; nor is reference made to the best Amer- 

 ican authorities on anthropometry, particularly "Anthropometry and 

 Physical Examination," by Jay W. Seaver, published in New Haven, 

 1896, intended for practical use in connection with physical education 

 and physical examination of college students or men of that period of 

 adolescence which just precedes early manhood, and upon whom the 

 heaviest military demands are naturally made, f 



* The report had been reprinted from the Proceedings of the National Academy of 

 Sciences, Vol. Ill, August, 1917. 



t Some exceptionally valuable observations on growth and the development of muscle 

 power, with special reference to physical education and the diseases of adolescence are con- 

 tained in a brief treatise on "The Adolescent Period," by Louis Starr, M. D., Philadelphia, 

 1915. See, also, "The Problem of Age, Growth and Death," by Chas. S. Minot, LL. D., New 

 York, 1908. 



16 



