Salt Lake Tribune | 1919-07-09 | Page 6 | American Army Healthy

AMERICAN ARMY HEALTHY The American forces in the late war were by far the healthiest army in. the world's entire history of military campaigns. cam-paigns. At Tours there was kept the most elaborate and complete record of ! tho physical condition of officers and ; men ever devised. Four million, three hundred thousand cards were used in a system which told at a glance the health, the wounds, the diseases, the deaths and tho recoveries in the Yankee Yan-kee army. According to an account of-tho manner man-ner in whicli this record was kept, published pub-lished in t lie journal of the American Medical association, -19.3 per cent of the army was effective for duty at all times. Of the 5.7 per cent on the non-efficient non-efficient list, only .1.1 per cent were so rendered by disease. Of tho 105,000 Americans wounded, the medical corps saved the lives of -1S2,000. To the date when the article was written there had been 72,723 deaths in tho American expeditionary forces, of which 32,192 were on tho "high field rendezvous," 13,420 of wounds and battle causes, 22,205 of diseases, and 4306 of accidents and other causes. Typhoid, which used to be the great scourge of armies, played a very insignificant insig-nificant part in the battle between disease dis-ease and the American army. There have been only about 1000 eases altogether alto-gether and less than half a hundred deaths. Pneumonia replaced it as tho most dreaded of diseases. At the time of the armistice there had been about S000 deaths from this disease and influenza in-fluenza in the American expeditionary forces. Epidemic dysentery, although causing only a very few deaths, at one time pervaded our fighting forces to a serious extent. In the American expeditionary force there were15,690 officers, 8587 nurses and 122,473 enlisted men of the medical med-ical corps; 153 base hospitals, 66 camp hospitals and 12 convalescent camps. We had 193,000 beds on November 11, 191S, capable of an emergency expansion expan-sion to 276,000 in case of need. Tho program of procurement and construction construc-tion would have assured us by this time of 423,700 beds and an emergency expansion of all kinds of edifices.