Medical mission

“ Many of the war-born institutions would come to a close — but not the Army Medical Museum. It would continue its mission of showing, by specimens, preparations, and illustrations, the nature and form of disease and injury, and teaching ways and procedures to alleviate suffering and lessen mortality according to the medical lights of the time.
↑ Duncan, Louis C: Evolution of the Ambulance Corps and Field Hospital, p. 4. In The Medical Department of the United States Army in the Civil War. Washington, 1911. ”

“ I was glad of the call, for it gave me the opportunity of directing a dying man to something even more urgently needed than medicine. I spent a few days with him, and visited all of the leading families and officials of the place, establishing most valuable and friendly relations with them.
Long before this time, both the demand for medical treatment and the responsibility involved far exceeded what any person without complete professional training could undertake to meet. We had urged upon our Board the claims of our mission for a physician. ”

“ It is this in-patient work that gives the most encouraging opportunities to the medical missionary. There in his little hospital he has patients of all creeds, lying side by side; many have been relieved or cured by operation, and will listen gratefully to all the teaching they can get. Each patient before the operation hears the doctor pray a short prayer, asking God to bless the operation and cause it to be successful. ”

“ On the medical side, it is not clearly understood whether it is the first duty, or the last duty, of medicals to attend to the children whom we gather together in such large numbers, whether the medicals ought to inspect all the children, whether they ought to be at hand to treat children who are obviously sick, whether these considerations ought to influence the location of the hospital, or of the place of residence of the medical missionaries, or whether this work, if they really gave much time to it, should be considered as withdrawing them from their proper work. ”

“ Is it not obvious that there should be a staff of medical officers and orderlies, detached altogether from any association with the treatment of disease, who should devote themselves entirely to the problem of prevention? ”

“ Preventable Diseases.—Men should be given a certain amount of theoretical knowledge of preventable diseases. These matters will be taken care of to a large extent by the Medical Corps; but men should be taught just what precautions are necessary to avoid recourse to the hospital. ”

“ It is a subject not unbecoming the highest attainments, to increase the stock of medical knowledge in that branch of our art. So important, indeed, to society, is the successful treatment of infantile diseases, that happy shall I be, if any effort of mine shall awaken attention to this hitherto neglected department of medicine. ”

“ Our Medical Corps is especially entitled to praise for the general effectiveness of its work, both in hospital and at the front. Embracing men of high professional attainments, and splendid women devoted to their calling and untiring in their efforts, this department has made a new record for medical and sanitary proficiency. ”

“ Behind the first line of my medical army will be a second line of able men constantly digesting new research for its practical needs—correcting, explaining, announcing; and, in addition, a force of public specialists to whom every difficulty in diagnosis will be at once referred. And there will be a properly organised system of reliefs that will allow the general practitioner and his right hand, the nurse, to come back to the refreshment of study before his knowledge and mind have got rusty. ”

“ A new and in many respects a nobler conception of medicine has been developed. Formerly medical practice was almost exclusively a personal service to the sick individual, and measures looking toward the general relief of disease and its prevention received scanty consideration. The idea of a wider service to the city, to the state, to the nation, to humanity rather than the personal service to the individual, is becoming dominant in medicine. ”

“ The transportation and hospitalization of the battle casualties and respiratory diseases have been accomplished in accordance with the principles of military surgery and preventative medicine, which reflects the intelligence and training on the part of the officers, nurses, and enlisted men of the Medical Department of the 92nd Division, in which pride may be justly felt. ”

“ We already carry on a large program in this country. for research and health.
In addition, regional medical centers can provide the most advanced diagnosis and treatment for heart disease and cancer and stroke and other major diseases. ”

“ There will not be complete success until means are discovered for training and enlisting every medical practitioner as a medical officer of health in the circle of his private or public practice, and of securing his services not only in the early and prompt detection of disease, but also in the systematic supervision during health of the families under his care, and in advising them as to habits or methods of life which are inimical to health. ”

“ The advances in general medical science and practice have also necessitated great elaboration of the resources for the study and treatment of the physical condition of the patients. Instruments of precision, laboratories, x-ray departments, dental and surgical operating rooms, massage and hydrotherapy departments, facilities for eye, throat, nose, and ear examinations and treatment, and all the other means of determining disease processes and applying proper treatment have been supplied and the methods and standards of modern clinical medicine and surgery are utilized. ”

“ ADVANTAGES OF SPECIALTIES.
By thorough organization and a perfect system of subdividing the practice of medicine and surgery in this institution, every invalid consulting us is treated by a specialist—one who devotes his undivided attention to the particular class of diseases to which his or her case belongs. The advantage of this arrangement must be obvious. Medical science offers a vast field for investigation, and no physician can, within the limit of a single life-time, achieve the highest degree of success in the treatment of every malady incident to humanity. ”

“ In other words, there should be for such an army at least 1,000 medical officers in the regular service, and also at least 3,000 volunteer surgeons, professionally and physically equipped for such work. ”

“ From the days when the first duty of the so-called army surgeon was to minister to his commanding general, and when the private soldier received but the scantiest if any attention, we have arrived at that time when the good health of the entire army is the aim and pride of the medical corps, and when public opinion demands for every enlisted man a degree of watchful care greater than many parents bestow upon their own families. ”

“ The physician may do very much for the welfare of the sick, more than others can do, although he does not, even in the major part of cases, undertake to control and overcome the disease by art. It was with these views that I never reported any patient cured at our hospital. ”

“ The army medical officer found new problems facing him at every fresh development of the conflict, and to fit him for grappling with these new phases of human needs the Medical Department of the Army established numberless schools and courses of study at medical institutions, at hospitals and wherever could be brought together the factors necessary for this specialized and intensive training. ”

“ We salute the Nation's emergency medical services personnel: those who staff the ambulances, those who provide medical control, and those physicians and nurses in the trauma centers whose daily efforts are devoted to emergency medicine. We all depend upon their skills and dedication. ”

“ The second and most urgent element consists in the organization of hospital and consultative expert services for all, which, while greatly increasing each patient’s prospect of prompt recovery, will enable the general practitioner to escape from the soul-destroying inefficiency of unaided medical practice. ”

“ General practitioners shall mainly provide such services as diagnosis, treatment, referral, prevention, healthcare and rehabilitation of common diseases and frequently-occurring diseases, chronic diseases management, and health management. ”

“ He entered the Marine Hospital Service by competitive examinations, where, rising rapidly to the rank of supervising surgeon-general, he reorganized the whole department; he introduced the physical examination of seamen and managed campaigns against yellow fever. ”

“ When the examination in these subjects has been satisfactorily negotiated, she passes on to medical work proper, the study of disease and the result of accident in the living person—in other words, she walks the wards of the hospital and undertakes duties as clerk to physicians and dresser to surgeons, from whom she receives instruction in medicine, surgery, and pathology. Special branches are also studied, such as midwifery, women's diseases, and affections of the throat, ear, eye, and skin. The treatment of minor accidents also receives special attention. ”

“ Institute set up an extensive service, making study sets available to all Army laboratories, to keep medical officers throughout the Army informed about the pathology of the diseases prevalent during the war. ”

“ In private and even dispensary [Pg 46] practice, where the subjects were of a better physical and moral nature, we often saw the disease subside, and health return, after less attention to administer medical aid, or to supply other wants, than was exhibited at the hospital. We are, notwithstanding, sanguine enough to anticipate useful results from our attentive study of the symptoms of the disease, in connexion with that of the post mortem examinations, and to consider ourselves as in possession of lights to guide us with more certainty than before. ”

“ What brings these men through these trials and dangers is not only their American intestinal fortitude, all of them are armed with knowledge. Somewhere, aboard ship, in naval training stations, or in "boot" camps, doctors wearing the Navy's blue and the gold oak leaves and silver acorns which are the insignia of the Navy Medical Corps have taught these men how to protect themselves, if possible, from infection and disease. ”

“ One of the cornerstones of a strong healthcare system is the provision of competent and efficient medical professionals. We will exert all efforts to improve the welfare of our doctors, our nurses, and other medical frontliners. ”

“ Last year, these tags and services helped save the lives of an estimated two thousand people with hidden medical conditions.
Millions of additional Americans can protect themselves and help to improve the effectiveness of emergency medical care in this country by registering with a medic alert service. ”

“ The growth of this and the neighbouring colonies calls aloud for a medical institution. The increasing number of inhabitants demands an increase of those who exercise the profession of Medicine and Surgery, and ought to be an argument with all of us, who regard either the present or future advantages of the country, to attend seriously to the importance of the subject. ”

“ The army doctors are henceforth to go through the ordinary medical and surgical education first, and then to have an additional training to fit them to manage the diseases which most afflict armies, and the hurts which are received in battle. ”

“ No better means of encouraging, fostering, and patronizing medical science could be thought of than to give the prestige and the emoluments of physician to the head of the Church to important makers of medicine in every generation. ”

“ I take pleasure in recommending your institution to the afflicted, believing that you have the very best treatment for chronic diseases known, and I have had an opportunity to satisfy myself, from conversation with other invalids in your Institution, of the care and skillful treatment that you administer, and its excellent effects. ”

“ And though the brunt of this task is borne and must be borne by the shoulders of medical men, physicians assume the burden cheerfully, now that they know that they can count upon the intelligent support and the cordial sympathy of an ever-enlarging extra-medical aggregate. ”

“ Having specialists who devote their entire time and attention to the study of these diseases, we are able to relieve and cure a large number painlessly and speedily, in which the awkward manipulations of physicians or surgeons, whose hands, untrained by constant and skillful use, not only fail to effect any benefit, but set up new, or aggravate existing, disease. ”

“ Major Callender also pointed out that the Medical Department of the Army was in far better position to conduct a medical museum than was any other government service or an independent organization. "This is true," he said, "for preventive medicine and hygiene, as well as for pathology. Army officers have, since the advent of modern means of disease control, led the field in preventive medicine and hygiene. ”

“ The eye and hand must be trained to see and deal with dangers to health. "No practical knowledge is possible on any subject without the meeting of the senses with the material."
(8) After a Health Missioner has become settled in a district, she will then be able to receive a Probationer, who, while attending the Medical Officer's lectures and classes, will find time to accompany the Health Missioner in her round of visiting. [It will depend on the tact of the two ladies if this is acceptable or not to the cottage mother; if unacceptable, it must, of course, cease.] ”

“ Such knowledge of medicine and surgery as is possessed by the medical profession generally will not alone suffice to make an efficient military surgeon. He must have, in addition, knowledge of the administration and sanitation of large field hospitals and camps, in order to safeguard the health and lives of men intrusted in great numbers to his care. ”