396 surgeons' reports — oiiio — thiru district. 



My experience is too limited for lue to express an oiiiiiiou on tbe subject, but I cannot see why 

 negroes should not make as good soldiers as any other race. 



I am not well enough acquainted with the oiieratiou of the enrollment law to say anything 

 about it, but would suggest that all men be included iu the law from eighteen years old to forty-five. 



C. F. WALDEN, 

 Surgeon Board of Enrollment Ninth District of Missouri. 



Saint Charles, Mo., May 29, 18G5. 



OHIO— THIKD DISTRICT.' 

 Extracts from report of Dr. W. L. Schenck. 



• # * Since aiy present appointment, 1 have examined about four thousand 



recruits and substitutes, three hundred drafted men, and three thousand enrolled men ; total, seven 

 thousand three hundred. 



The Third Congressional District of Ohio is composed of the counties of Montgomery, Butler, 

 Warren, and Preble. It is situated in the valleys of the Miami Kivers, and for fertility of soil is 

 not excelled by any equal area of land iu the United States. Its diseases are those incident to its 

 alluvial soil and climatic changes, though the malarious fevers so common during the first settle- 

 ment of the country are now comparatively rare, and are replaced by the atonic fevers which mark 

 the age. We have our full share of inflammatory diseases, dependent on our sudden clianges of 

 temperature, and of the physical ills consequent upon our numerous breweries and still-houses. 

 The chief occupation of tbe people of the district is cultivating the soil ; but, like all rich agricul- 

 tural districts, it is thickly dotted over with villages and cities, in which flourish the professions, 

 arts, and manufactures, giving it a fair distribution of the various vocations of life. Its citizens 

 are generally industrious, intelligent, and patriotic, though Montgomery County has her Vallan- 

 digham, and Butler her snake-bitten miscreants, who resolved to resist the draft, and straightway 

 concealed themselves behind some fellow-citizens of African descent. 



Bv far the most common cause for exemption from enrollment, discharge from draft, and rejec- 

 tion of recruits has been hernia. The reasons why it has disqualitied so large a number are of so 

 general a nature that they scarce require comment. Whilst the imperfect development of the poor 

 and squalid inhabitants of crowded cities and the wasted and flaccid muscles of the consumptive are 

 usually considered the predisposing, and their severe labors and straining coughs the exciting, 

 causes of this disea.se, iu this district neither of these have existed to any considerable extent, nor 

 have the cases been confined to any nation, class, or A'ocation. The next most common cause has 

 been varix. Under paragraph 85, only varicocele of the lower extremities has warranted exemp- 

 tion, though I have rejected many recruits for circocele ; and it is surprising how many young men 

 have that form of the disease. I think about onethird of all the recruits examined have had more 

 or less enlargement of the spermatic veins, and I am convinced that the growing moral and phys- 

 ical sin of self pollution is a common cause of this form of varix. 



Of all the causes for rejection of recruits, imperfect development has been greatly in excess. 

 Those thus rejected have usually claimed they were lull eighteen years of age, though I am satisfied 

 such was rarely the case. They were generally induced to present themselves with a lie in their 

 mouths by unprincipled brokers and recruiting committees, who found in their inexperience lit sub- 

 jects for their cupidity, or a cheap means of clearing the quotas of their townships, and there was 

 no risk to thetn whether the recruits were accepted or rejected. 



In my examinations, I have observed an unusual amount of eruptive diseases, almost enough 

 to warrant the assertion of Hahnemann, (/' t]iere was any philosophy in it, that " psora is the only real 

 fundamental cause and producer of all the numerous, I may say innumerable, forms of disease." 

 (Organon, p. 183.) But is this eruption, so frequently noticed, psora ? Some physicians, I believe, 

 are calling it "army-itch," and deciding it is it(;h, but different from scabies, because in many cases 

 they find no acari, and fail to cure it with sulphur. The name, 1 imagine, comes from a too com- 

 mon practi(!e of adopting popular names for diseases without sufficient care in diagnosing and 



' No roports were reteivod from tbe tirst iind second districts. 



