LX 



INTKODUCTOKY., 



in general plan, though the minor details, as might be expected, exhibit some diversity.' 

 It will be seen that where the national forces are maintained by voluntary enlisting 

 and the inducements of a bounty, a higher standard obtains, and more rigid exclusion 

 is made of those laboring under a moderate degree of disability. In the continental 

 states of Europe, where a system of conscription prevails which is very thoroughly 

 enforced, the military debt due from every subject is exacted in a more comprehensive 

 manner. If a man be unable to do full service as an able-bodied soldier, he may be 

 competent for partial duty in time of war, and be placed in a reserve-class for that 

 purpose, as in Prussia ; or he may be, as in Switzerland, assigned to such duties as 

 were performed by our Veteran Reserve Corps in the late war. In all cases, the state 

 retains its hold upon men who may be able at some future period to render those services 

 for which they are unfitted at the time of examination. This economic management 

 of material, and the determination to obtain in some manner or at some time the service 

 due the state, gives rise to the extreme minuteness with which degrees of disqualifica- 

 tion are laid down in the instructions to the surgeon. Of this, the French medical code 

 is a striking example. 



Under foreign governments, the subjects of age, stature, and girth of chest come 

 generally under the supervision of the recruiting officer and not of the surgeon. In 

 the United States, the medical officer is required to report upon these points, their rela- 

 tion to the general estimate of the recruit's physical capacity being obvious and 

 inseparable. The enrollment-acts enacted during the late war established no limits of 

 height or of circumference of chest, neither were any prescribed in the instructions 

 issued by the Provost-Marshal-General to the examining surgeons of boards of enroll- 

 ment, the matter being left to their judgment in estimating the man's physical capacity.® 



Tlie following table presents a comparative view of the limits of stature, circum- 

 ference of chest, and age required of the foot-soldier at the present day in the United 

 States and in some of the principal states of Europe. 



The employment of anaesthetics as an adjuvant in discovering the exact condition 

 of the recruit in suspected cases is expressly permitted only in the United States, and 



' The applications for the official instructions issued by the Russian and Italian governments weronusnecessful. 

 ^ Heviacd regnlaiions for the government of the Bureau of the Provost-Mar^hal-General of the United Stales, 8vo, Wash- 

 ington, April I, 1864, sections 86 and 95. 



