SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. L. No. 1279 



attempts be made from time to time to force 

 the introduction of unwise policies and the 

 modification of well-planned organization; 

 these influences may emanate from political 

 centers and sources that are unfortunate. At 

 best such influences delay the progress of sci- 

 entific investigation and the application of sci- 

 entific methods, in this instance to the Bu- 

 reau of Fisheries; at worst they destroy work 

 built up by laborious efforts in the past. We 

 must be awake to the need not only for build- 

 ing an organization and for securing the best 

 so that it can weather the shifting of political 

 results but also for directing the organization 

 parties and of public opinion in politics. 



Henhy B. Ward 



MEDICINE, A DETERMINING FACTOR 

 IN WARi 



The death rate in our Civil War of killed 

 and dying of wounds is given as thirty-three 

 per thousand, the disease death rate as sixty- 

 five. In the Spanish War the death rate from 

 battle is five and the death rate from disease 

 30.4 per thousand. In the present war, taking 

 the statistics up to March 28, 1919, we find 

 the rate of death from wounds received in 

 action is 14.191 and that of death from dis- 

 ease is 14.797 per thousand. This includes 

 the army on both sides of the ocean. The 

 statistics of the American Expeditionary 

 Forces, with an average strength of 975,716, 

 reveal a rate of death from wounds in action 

 of 31.256 per thousand and a death rate from 

 disease of 11.233. Of those who died of dis- 

 ■sase, pneumonia claimed 9.146 per thousand. 



Studying comparatively the diseases of the 

 American armies during the Civil War, Span- 

 ish-American War and the recent war, we find 

 that malaria was one of the chief causes of 

 disability in both the Civil War and the Span- 

 ish-American War, though it caused but 6 per 

 cent, of the deaths in the Civil War and but 

 10 per cent, in the Spanish-American War. 

 But in the recent war malaria has caused such 



1 From the presidential address of Dr. Alexander 

 Lambert given at the Atlantic City Meeting of 

 the American Medical Association and printed in 

 the Journal of the association. 



a small number of deaths that it is not given 

 in detail, but is put into the aggregate term of 

 "other diseases." Typhoid fever, with typho- 

 malaria, so called, was one of the chief causes 

 of death from disease in both the Civil War 

 and the Spanish-American War, causing 22.4 

 per cent, of the deaths of the Civil War, and 

 being the one great uncontrolled epidemic of 

 the Spanish-American War, causing in the 

 fighting period of the latter war 60.5 per cent, 

 of all deaths. But in the recent war only 0.4 

 per cent, of the deaths are chargeable to this 

 scourge. Pneumonia, on the other hand, 

 causing only 13 per cent, of the deaths during 

 the four years of the Civil War and only 3 per 

 cent, in five months of the Spanish-American 

 War, has become the dreaded epidemic of the 

 recent war, causing in the American army 85 

 per cent, of all deaths from disease. In the 

 Civil War, meningitis caused 2 per cent, of 

 the deaths, and 2 per cent, of the deaths in the 

 Spanish-American War, and it caused 4 per 

 cent, of the deaths in this war. Smallpox 

 caused 4 per cent, of the deaths in the Civil 

 War; in the Spanish-American War, one man 

 died of this disease ; in this war, one man died 

 from smallpox in the United States and five 

 in France. In 1918 and in the first months 

 of 1919, there were 102 patients with smallpox 

 admitted to the hospitals in the United States. 

 These patients came into the various camps 

 from civil life, for the disease developed 

 among the recruits before they could be vac- 

 cinated and thus protected, but it has not de- 

 veloped at all among the vaccinated troops in 

 the United States. Dysentery caused 28 per 

 cent, of the deaths in the Civil War, and 

 nearly 30 per cent. (29.3 per cent.) of the 

 5,600,000 cases of disease reported in that war. 

 In the Spanish-American War it caused 5.6 

 per cent, of the deaths. But it caused only 

 forty-one deaths out of 48,000 cases, or 0.08 

 per cent, of the deaths in the recent war. 

 The transmission of yellow fever by mosqui- 

 toes does not come into consideration in the 

 recent war, though there were small epidemics 

 of this disease in both the former wars, there 

 being about 1,300 cases in the Civil War and 

 about 1,100 in the Spanish-American War. 

 There is one achievement by the Medical 



