Munson also refers to Greenleaf as authority for the statement that : 



Experienced surgeons will reject all recruits whose defects fall under the 

 first two headings from a conviction that they render the men unfit or unde- 

 sirable for the army; but those under the third head are frequently rejected 

 from fear of responsibility, a dread of official correspondence and to an ultimate 

 damage of professional character. 



It is therefore self-evident that the rules and regulations which 

 govern in the examination of recruits, whether non-medical or medical 

 in a time of peace, and chiefly with reference to voluntary enlistment, 

 yield results of very limited scientific value. In a time of war, accord- 

 ing to Munson, those coming under the first of the three preceding 

 groups should be excluded, while those coming under the second and 

 the third should be as rigidly held in the service. In other words, 

 widely different points of view prevail in the selection of recruits for 

 military service during times of peace and during times of war, and un- 

 less this fact is kept carefully in mind, the statistics extending over a 

 long period of years are most likely to be seriously misleading. 



A DECADE OF UNITED STATES RECRUITING 

 STATISTICS 

 Limiting the observations for the time being to medically examined 

 applicants for military service, subjected to a previous process of 

 elimination by non-medical officers of the line, the table following is 

 of interest as illustrating the changes in the rejection rate during the 

 last decade, for which the information is available in detail : 



According to this table the maximum rejection rate occurred in 1906 

 or 22.5 per cent., and the minimum in 1911, or 9.1 per cent. Without 

 an analysis in full detail of the individual causes of rejection a final con- 

 clusion, of course, would not be justified, even as to the most general 



26 



