PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 165 



It seems probable that a feature of the Swiss system might be introduced with 

 sio-nal advantage, if judiciously controlled, namely, the enlistment of a certain niunber 

 of ])art{(iUi/-disah1cd men for duty as clerks, assistants, military police, and laboi-ers in 

 the stati' departments, and as nurses and attendants in the hospitals. It is true that in 

 Switzerland the report of the otHcial inspector makes complaint that, in spite of the 

 law, able-bodied soldiers of the first class are still detailed in large luimbers for dut\- 

 in the commissary's and quartermaster's departments, and that the partially-disabled 

 men are not found to be of the service intended.' This result, however, seems to have 

 l)roceeded from injudicious management. Able-bodied men are indispensable when it 

 is required to handle the heavy packages issued by the commissary of subsistence, 

 the quartermaster, or the medical purveyor ; and, under the present system, soldiers 

 must be detailed or laborers be hired for such work The same necessity exists in 

 hospitals, where men sound in body can alone make competent nurses. But there 

 still remains a hirge class of occupations in the ditferent departments of the Army in 

 \\ Inch corporal strength is not tiie chief requisite. It is unquestionable, also, that 

 many men now rejected as untit for military service on account of certdin personal 

 defects would prove able-bodied and serviceable in the second class Among such 

 defects, now involving rejection, may be named the loss of an eye, certain affections 

 of the eye, hare-lip, loss of teeth, stammering, wry-neck, deformities of lower extremities, 

 loss of a thumb or of fingers, baldness, and some others, none of which preclude the sub- 

 jects of them from doing essential service in the departments indicated. 



In the introductiou to tliis work a comparison was made of the instructions given 

 to recruiting-surgeons in the principal states of Eurojte with the regulations in force 

 in the United States. In the course of those remarks, occasion was taken to point 

 out the very frequent changes that had been made in regard to the important 

 quality of stature. The pride of rulers has been gratified in all ages by the selection 

 of soldiers of great height, martial figure, and uniform appearance ; but these costly 

 ornaments of the parade-ground are becoming obsolete in the organization of modern 

 armaments. Breech-loading guns may be effective in the hands of men of low stature ; 

 and, in all the essential qualities of the soldier, in courage, endurance of fatigue, 

 activity, intelligent care of himself, and freedom from undue liability to disease, the 

 preponderating advantages are with men not above the medium height. 



When the law for enrolling the national forces of the United States was enacted 

 during the late war, no limitation of stature was prescribed Due circumspection 

 was exercised by the examining surgeons in regard to it, and the result ot that dispo- 

 sition of the matter was entirely satisfactory. It is much to be desired that 

 no restriction as to height should ever be announced as obligatory tvhen large numbers 

 of men are needed. The mean stature of men varies so decidedly under the influence 

 of race that the application of one uniform standard of the kind is certain to result in 

 the rejection of in;iny efficient and capable recruits, in France, for example, it has 

 Ijeen found that the largest number of exemptions for deficient stature occurred in the cen- 

 tral provinces, inhabited by descendants of the Gallo-Celts. In purity of race, these men 

 excel all other natives of French soil, and they are among the hardi est and best of her 



' Vela- veybeniserungen und vrspariih^: im culgcnoaiiisclim wehrweem : bcricht an die laiidesrathliche crspaniiss-komnussiov, 

 voii J. Staempfli, uationalratb, ItJmo, Beru, 186G, p. 15. M. Staeinpfli is now (1875) president of tlio Swi.ss uatioiia 

 coiiucil. 



