INTKODUCTOEY. LXXV 



be incorrect, however, to draw any general conclusion as to the prevalence of particular 

 disability from this result ; the explanation is to be found in the insufficient induce- 

 ments then oftered by Army pay and prospects to able-bodied and energetic men in 

 comparison with the unlimited field for industry in civil life. The consequence was 

 that the di'egs of the populations of the cities, and the most idle and dissipated of 

 foreign immigrants formed the bulk of those offering to enlist. 



The number of men credited on the several calls made by the President of the United 

 States from the beginning to the end of the war of the rebellion, and put into actual 

 service in the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, was 2,690,401. This number does not 

 include the "emergency men," or men enlisted for short periods; their number 

 amounted to 72,000, making a total of 2,7G2,401 men. When to this total of fighting 

 men is added that of the men rejected as unqualified for military service, some idea 

 may be formed of the opportunity afforded by these enlistments for the measurement 

 and examination of the Immau body. Unfortunately, however, complete records of 

 only a portion of these examinations were preserved, though the cause of the deficiency 

 is easily explained. 



In response to the first calls for volunteers, the flower of the young men of the 

 country presented themselves, and were accepted without very rigid scrutiny ; such 

 physical examination as they were subjected to was hasty, incomplete, and without 

 systematic record. Mr. Gould, the statistician of the United States Sanitary Commis- 

 sion, is of opinion that the mean height of the true volunteers, those, namely, who 

 came forward at the beginning of the war, exceeded that of the recruits obtained later 

 under the drafting system, and he expresses his regret that so many of the measure- 

 ments in his work should have been obtained from the latter source.' It has been 

 already stated that nearly all the measurements which form the basis of the tables and 

 calculations of the present volume are of drafted men ; but, so far from being a matter 

 of regreti it is to be observed that so admirable an opportunity of obtaining an actual 

 mean of certain physical characteristics of a large part of the adult male population, 

 selected by chance, was never before offered. The draft inexorably recorded all male 

 citizens between the ages of twenty and forty-five as liable to military duty, and 

 exemptible only for cause shown. The description of those rejected, as well as of those 

 found fit for military service, was necessary to furnish a true mean of the population, 

 while from the first volunteers the rnean dimensions of a superior class only could liave 

 been deduced. 



It was not until the exigencies of the war called into operation the machinery of 

 ■ the draft that any systematic examination was made imperative, and that the records 

 were directed in all instances to be sent to a central office for preservation. The pres- 

 ent work, in connection with the copious tables already published in the Provost- 

 Marshal- General's report of 1866,- completes the presentation of the statistics thereby 

 obtained. Their scope and probable value have been already commented upon. 



Quite early in the war, the United States Sanitary Commission directed their 

 agents to collect certain statistics as to the physique of soldiers and sailors then in 



' Iiircstigations, &c., p. 91. 



' Final report made to the Sccrc'ori/ of War by the. Provosl-Marshal-Gciicral, 8vo, Washiugton, 18G8. Report of Medical 

 Branch, pp. 2S8-700. 



