SUKGEONS' KEPOETS — MASSACHUSETTS FIFTH DISTRICT. 207 



MASSACHUSETTS— FIFTH DISTRICT. 

 Extract H from report of Dr. Daniel Peelet. 



• ♦ The number of men examined as conscripts, volunteers, substitutes, and enrolled 



men applying for exemption, was, as near as I can determine, about 5,000. These, with the excep- 

 tion of a few of the volunteers and substitutes, were residents of this district, which consists of 

 three small cities (neither uf them exceeding 25,000 inhabitants) and twenty-three smaller towns. 

 The population is not in any part alarmingly dense, nor very sparse in the rural portions. 



About one-fourth of the men are engaged in shoemaking ; a few in the towns of Swampscott, 

 Marblehead, Gloucester, and Ro(!kport are fishermen or sea-faring men, and the rest are found dis- 

 tributed in a great variety of occupations, as factory-operatives, carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, 

 machinists, tanners, teamsters, clerks, und professional men. With few exceptions, they are active, 

 enterprising, and industrious; neither relaxed by excess of luxury nor pinched by extreme 

 poverty. * * * 



It would not be right to s.iy that we had awy prevalent disease among us. Tweutj' per cent, 

 of our deaths are from consumption ; but all New England has the same complaint to make. 



The occupations of a large part of our men have been unfavorable to health. The shoemaker 

 of former years, and, indeed, until verj- recently, did his work in a small, crowded, and unventi- 

 lated room, sitting constantly and*for many hours in a cramped position. He thus became of 

 necessity, and jjroverbially, a feeble man, and the effects remain to this day, although the causes 

 are now for the most part removed. * * 



Of the whole number exempted from the draft of 1863, the shoemakers numbered 403, or at 

 the rate of 338 per thousand. 



Tlje most renmrkable prevalent disability among us was feebleness of constitution. By this 

 I understand permanent debility, whether congenital or induced by manner of living. The ratio 

 of discharges for this disability was 105 per thousand. For loss of teeth there were exempted 91 

 per thousand. The frequency of both these disabilities I refer to the unhealthy occupations of a 

 large part of our men. The remarkable loss of teeth cannot arise, as the popular prejudice would 

 have it, from excessive medication; for we have, during the last thirty years, been swallowing a 

 less and less amount of powerful drugs, until we almost seem to have met the followers of Hahne- 

 mann half-way; nevertheless, decay of the teeth has been on the increase. 



In further explanation of the large proportion of exempts in this district, I would call atten- 

 tion to the fact of a very large emigration of our young and able-bodied men to the new States and 

 Territories, and to the thoroughness of our enrollment of all who were found among us within the 

 specified ages, however manilestly unfit for military duty. # # # 



It is doubtful whether any great improvements can be made in the regulations. In a few in- 

 stances I have felt i>ained to find a umn who honestly desired to enlist, butr was rejected for some 

 disability, and wUo afterward was unable to get exemi)ted from the draft or the enrollment, not- 

 withstanding the existence of the same disability. 1 do not refer to those numerous cases of men 

 wiio make a pretense of coming to enlist, and at the same time make such complaints as to insure 

 their rejection. These we enter on the record as " rejected on their own complaints,'' which are 

 not considered for a moment as being any ground of discharge from the draft. 



Extreme myopia is a real disability, but it is not easy to describe in words the degree oi myopia 

 tiiat ought to exem])t. External piles are souu'times so large as to be a constant and severe disa- 

 bility to the soldier, yet it is dillicidt to say how huge and troublesome they must be, in order to 

 exempt. l*erhai)s in both these cases it should be allowable to receive testimony that the man was 

 seriously tlisabled in his oidiuary work or occupation. * * * 



In regard to the number of men that can be physically examined pcM- day with accuracy, I 

 think that the examination of sixty volunteers or thirty conscripts would be, with the other duties 

 incidental to the surgeon of the board, a fair day's work, * # # 



Among the numerous frauds practiced by drafted men, should be noticed the claim that a 

 present disability was a permanent one, the best illustration of which was in two cases of men 

 who presented themselves when under the indueuce of some drug. The pulse was small, feeble, 



