THE EXAMINATION OF RECRUITS BY OFFICERS 

 OF THE LINE 



The practice which prevailed of having the preliminary examination 

 of recruits for voluntary enlistment made by officers of the line tempo- 

 rarily assigned to recruiting duty cannot be defended as in conformity 

 to the strictly scientific requirements of physical anthropology, which is 

 as yet but an imperfectly developed branch of knowledge, a thorough 

 understanding of which would prove invaluable, especially in the 

 furtherance of the aims and ideals of preventive medicine. What 

 represents normal men and normal proportions of bodily development 

 and growth is neither adequately known nor adequately taught in even 

 the best medical schools of the present day. Many of the most useful 

 contributions to the scientific study of physical anthropology have been 

 made by physicians, but the fundamental theory of anthropometry was 

 worked out by Quetelet, a statistician and mathematician, and the 

 largest body of trustworthy data was brought together by an 

 astronomer, Mr. B. A. Gould, who secured approximately trustworthy 

 measurements of bodily proportions of over one million of recruits 

 during the Civil War, * Physical deficiencies and abnormalities are 

 obviously matters of the utmost medical significance as regards appro- 

 priate methods of treatment and cure, or of rational adaptation to 

 highly specialized needs. It would therefore seem unnecessary to re-em- 

 phasize the suggestion frequently made that the physical measurements 

 of recruits or conscripts should be made by qualified physicians and 

 not by laymen, least of all by officers of the line not thoroughly trained 

 in the fundamental principles and methods of physical anthropology. 

 From this point of view serious objection must be raised to the conclu- 

 sion advanced by Lieutenant-Colonel Keefer that "While it is not to 

 be expected that line officers on recruiting duty shall be able to detect 

 obscure affections of the internal organs, there are many grosser defects 

 which are readily apparent to them. Such are: Deformities, skin 

 eruptions, pallor, emaciation, inebriety, venereal disease, defective 

 development of parts, lice, dirty person, rupture, piles, stiff joints, 

 varicose veins, flat feet, indecent tattooing, etc. Furthermore, internal 

 disease may be suspected from shortness of breath, a thumping heart, 

 dimness of vision, or irregular pulse following moderate exertion." It 

 is only necessary to review this long list of more or less obscure 

 physical or pathological conditions to emphasize the practical necessity 

 that they shall be ascertained and passed upon as to their relative 

 significance by a qualified physician and not by an officer of the line, 



* Investigations in the military and anthropological statistics of American soldiers, by 

 Benjamin Apthorp Gould, published for the U. S. Sanitary Commission, Cambridge, River- 

 side Press, 1869. See also Medical Statistics of the Provost-Marshal General's Bureau, com- 

 piled under the direction of the Secretary of War, by J. H. Baxter, A. M., M. D., Wash- 

 ington, 1875, 2 vols. ; this report includes an elaborate outline oi the plan and scope of the 

 work, the instructions to recruiting surgeons issued by the various governments, an outline 

 of the history of anthropometry, a review of the tables and their results, a series of charts 

 and maps, and, finally, a number of special reports of boards of enrollment, and other 

 documents. 



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