In preparation for large numbers of wounded and invalided men, the
Medical Corps of the army has enlisted doctors and nurses by the
thousand. In addition to the work being done for the Red Cross, which is
a separate institution, the Army Medical Corps has enlarged its
personnel from 8,000 to 106,000, including orderlies, stretcher bearers,
and ambulance drivers. Its 900 doctors before the war are now increased
to 18,000. It had 375 army nurses a year ago; now it has 7,000. It had
no ambulance service; now it has 6,000 drivers in training.
Reconstruction institutions are being provided in the United States on a
more comprehensive scale than any other nation at war has attempted.
Already a few wounded soldiers are being reconstructed at Medical Corps
hospitals so as to be able to support themselves now that they are blind
or crippled. Professional men, nurses, and attendants from our most
noted civil reconstruction hospitals have been added to the personnel of
the Medical Corps for this work.
The hundreds of thousands of men taken from civil life into the army are
now showing a death rate from disease below that of men of military age
in civil life.