stature or weight distribution of the male population of military age, 

 since those above the maximum and those below the minimum of the 

 army standard are excluded. In no direction, however, are the statistics 

 more inconclusive than in the assigned causes of rejection for military 

 service, especially where the practice prevails of assigning all those 

 who are generally deficient in physique, health or bodily strength to a 

 relatively large group designated as "general debility." It is 

 true that for Germany the details of this group are reasonably 

 well understood, but it requires a thorough knowledge of the German 

 army regulations to determine the significance of numerically unim- 

 portant but medically suggestive causes and conditions. Unques- 

 tionably, the difficulties to be overcome are often serious, as, for illus- 

 tration, in the cases of retarded bodily development and deficien- 

 cies in consequence of the debilitating effects of previous illness, etc. 

 In the absence of a thoroughly well-considered international classifica- 

 tion of causes of rejection, the available statistical material requires 

 therefore to be used with extreme caution. 



In further illustration of these observations, it seems advisable to 

 briefly restate the principal causes of rejection in recruiting as officially 

 assigned in the army experience of representative countries, primarily 

 for the purpose of emphasizing still more precisely the inherent limita- 

 tions of army recruiting statistics in their medical aspects and the 

 more or less inconclusive evidence of the prevailing physical or medi- 

 cal defects and deficiencies in the recruiting material of the armies 

 of the different countries under review. Most of the following data 

 are derived, as a matter of convenience, from the treatise on Military 

 and Sanitary Statistics by Dr. H. Schwiening. 



CAUSES OF REJECTION IN THE GERMAN ARMY 



The first table is for the German army and the period 1904-08. In 

 addition to the six principal causes of rejection, the table shows the 

 percentage of such rejections in the total number of recruits examined, 

 which must not be confused with the percentage distribution of all 

 causes of rejection in the usual form, in which rejections only are con- 

 sidered and not with reference to the recruiting material from which 

 they are derived. 



PRINCIPAL CAUSES OF REJECTION IN THE GERMAN ARMY 



1904-1908 



Per Cent. 

 Examined 



1. General Debility 19.3 



2. Diseases of Heart and Circulation 3.0 



3. Minor Medical Defects (as defined by regulations) 3.0 



4. Defects and Deformities of the Extremities 2.9 



5. Flatfoot 2.1 



6. Hernia 2.1 



68 



