The Health bulletin [serial] - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

6 The Health Bulletin August, 1951health of our troops stationed in permanentposts in the United States wasbetter than that of the average nonmilitarycitizen. This is generally truebecause (1) the military forces aremade up largely of vigorous young adultswho have been carefully selected; (2)the American military man's way ofliving, including his personal hygiene,diet, housing, and physical training isregulated; (3) he is immimized againstsmallpox, typhoid, and other infectiousdiseases to which he may be exposed;and (4) he lives in a carefully sanitatedenvironment which is rigidly controlledby a well-organized Medical Service.Preventive Medicine ProgramIn World War IIThe hardships imposed by field serviceand combat make it difl&cult to maintainthis type of peacetime health protectionunder the conditions of war.Therefore when it appeared that theUnited States would be drawn intoWorld War II, the Surgeon General ofthe Army began to plan the expansionof the Medical Service to meet the increasedresponsibility of mobilizationand war. The situation was somewhatlike that faced today, but in 1940 wewere not so well prepared for war aswe are now. Although at that time thetotal Medical Service of the RegularArmy consisted of only a few thousandofficers, by the end of the war it hadexpanded to more than 100,000 officersand several hundred thousand enlistedmen a medical force which was largerthan the entire Regular Army prior tothe war.Convinced of the importance of diseaseprevention, to the accomplishmentof his mission the Surgeon Generalplaced primary emphasis on the developmentof a strong aggressive wartimeprogram of military preventivemedicine. This program was planned bythe preventive medicine service in hisoffice in Washington and the directorsof preventive medicine In the majortheater headquarters. It was put intoaction by Medical Service personnel inall the far-flung places where our troopsserved. Its effectiveness can be attributedto the cooperative action of the10 million military persons who carriedit out.The Preventive Medicine Service.—In1940 the Surgeon General started in hisoffice a formal organization whicheventually became the preventive medicineservice. It began with one officerand expanded rapidly until it became amajor imit of his staff. By 1944 thisservice consisted of the following divisions:(1) medical intelligence, (2) epidemiology,(3) veneral disease control,(4) tropical disease control, (5) laboratories,(6) sanitation and hygiene, (7)sanitary engineering, (8) nutrition, (9)occupational health, and (10) civil publichealth. The chief of the service alsoorganized the Board for the Control ofInfluenza and Other Epidemic Diseasesin the United States Army and theUnited States Army Typhus Commission.This Board, composed of morethan 100 civilian consultants to theSurgeon General, was divided into 10special commissions, each of which wasconcerned with a specific problem ofdisease control. It was later called theArmy Epidemiological Board and hasnow become the Armed Forces EpidemiologicalBoard. The U. S. A. TyphusCommission, which was a joint Army,Navy, and Public Health Service organization,was administered through theSecretary of War.The broad objective which guided thisservice in all its planning was to useevery possible facility in the nationmilitary and civUian— to keep the soldierwell. To attain this objective itwas necessary to apply all of the scientificinformation available to the preventionof disease and the conservationof military health and to promote researchto discover and develop moreeffective control methods. In accomplishingthis, the preventive medicineservice enlisted the help of many highlyqualified experts—at home and abroad—and it arranged for the assistance ofnumerous governmental and civilianagencies.The Army's preventive medicine programincluded (1) general measuresused to safeguard the soldier's health,