[This account of the first year's work of the United States War
Department in mobilizing the medical talent of the nation was
prepared in March, 1918, for THE NEW YORK TIMES, publishers of
CURRENT HISTORY MAGAZINE]
In April, 1917, the executive offices of the Surgeon General of the
United States Army occupied four rooms in the great War, State and Navy
Building at Washington, and the functions of the office were performed
by six officers and twenty clerks. Now there are attached to the Surgeon
General's office 165 officers, who employ 545 clerks, and the staff
fills five entire buildings and parts of other buildings, exclusive of
the Surgeon General's library, the Army Medical Museum, and the Army
Medical School. Within a day 6,000 telegrams and 5,000 other
communications have been received, replied to, and filed. The latest and
most approved systems of filing records and correspondence have been
installed under expert supervision, for the Surgeon General has called
to his aid specialists in other fields as well as in the field of
medicine. He has called chemists and statisticians, bankers and
efficiency engineers, sanitarians and electrical experts, architects and
engineers, and assigned them to duty in his office.
The Surgeon General himself, Major Gen. W. C. Gorgas, was appointed to
the office in recognition of the invaluable services rendered by him as
Chief Sanitary Officer of the Panama Canal Zone. The story of his work
there in protecting the laborers in the Panama Canal from infectious
diseases is one of the most brilliant chapters in the history of
American medicine. Without that work the efforts of Goethals would have
been as fruitless and as costly in lives and money as those of De
Lesseps. The Surgeon General's still greater task now is to provide
against every emergency which may affect the health and lives of
millions of men taken from the fields, the farms, the factories, and the
counting houses of the country, gathered into camps for organization and
sent across 3,000 miles of ocean. He must know how many men will be
taken sick, and where. He must know how many men will be wounded, and
where, and he must have at those points adequate provision of expert
surgeons and enlisted men, of medical and of surgical supplies, of food
and of clothing, of housing and of transportation, so that at no time
will any American soldier be sick without succor, or lie wounded without
aid.
In carrying out this gigantic task the Surgeon General has mobilized the
medical forces of the country, calling into his office the leaders in
every specialty of medicine and of surgery. At their desks as early as 7
o'clock in the morning will be found medical specialists whose
professional incomes are written in five and six figures, but who have
abandoned these incomes for the modest pay of a Major, who have given up
their luxurious homes for a Washington boarding house, and who, instead
of enjoying a well-earned leisure, toil ceaselessly from early morning
until late at night in their efforts to co-ordinate most effectively the
work of the doctors in the war. It is for the purpose of doing justice
to the attainments of these men that General Gorgas is advocating scores
of new commissions of high rank in the national army.
Every morning at 7:30 the Surgeon General's truck delivers his mail at
the Mills Building, at Seventeenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue,
Washington, in which are situated the central executive offices. The
mail is distributed and on the desks of the officers for final
disposition not later than 9:15. Within twelve working hours practically
every communication received will have been acted upon and returned to
permanent files. Here, as in every other phase of the work, a specialist
has been employed, Captain J. L. Gooch having been called from his
position as subscription manager for the Butterick Company to organize
the office routine. The most approved mechanical devices, including
statistical machines, have been installed under Captain Gooch's
direction.
A complete medical history is kept of every soldier and of every officer
from the time he enters the service until he retires, resigns, or dies.
A special fireproof building is now being erected which will be devoted
exclusively to the care of these records, the preservation of which may
be a matter of vital importance fifty years hence.
Attached to the Surgeon General's office are three representatives of
the Royal Army Medical Corps of Great Britain--Colonel T. H. Goodwin, C.
M. G., D. S. O.; Captain John Gilmour of the Royal Army Medical Corps,
and Lieut. Col. J. J. Aitken of the Royal Veterinary Corps--and two
representatives of the French Army Medical Service--Colonel C. U. Dercle
and Major Edouard Rist. These four surgeons act as liaison officers,
keeping the Medical Department of the United States Army in touch with
the medical services of Great Britain and France. They have made many
informing addresses to medical societies all over the United States and
have given lectures at the Army Medical School.
The immediate staff of the Surgeon General comprises his personal aid,
Major M. C. Furbush, M. R. C., of Philadelphia; Colonel George E.
Bushnell, M. C., (Medical Corps of the regular army;) Colonel Deane C.
Howard, M. C., and Lieut. Col. James V. Van Dusen, M. C. Colonel
Bushnell, besides being chief assistant to the Surgeon General, has
devoted his special attention to the field in which he has won a unique
reputation, that of the treatment of tuberculosis.
General Gorgas has enlisted the co-operation of the leading surgeons of
the United States as members of the "Rotary Surgical Staff." Among those
Medical Reserve Corps officers who have already served for a period at
the Surgeon General's office and who are still subject to call from time
to time as occasion requires are Major William J. Mayo, former
President, and his brother, Major Charles H. Mayo, now President of the
American Medical Association.
The work of the Surgeon General's office is divided up among seventeen
general main divisions. The work of each division is practically
independent of the others, though the work of all is co-ordinated. At
the head of each of these divisions is an expert in that particular
field, usually a medical officer of the regular army, who has around
him a group of expert associates, many of whom are drawn from civil
life.
On April 1, 1917, there were 700 medical officers and about 10,000
enlisted men in the Medical Department of the United States Army. There
are now more than 17,000 medical officers in active service and about
150,000 enlisted men in the Medical Department.