Military doctor

“ It is surely incumbent on the doctor performing the experiment to satisfy himself that the subjects volunteered after having been informed of the nature and hazards of the experiment. If they are not volunteers, it is his duty to report to his superiors and discontinue the experiment. ”

“ “Nothing of the sort. I knew you came from Afghanistan. From long habit the train of thoughts ran so swiftly through my mind, that I arrived at the conclusion without being conscious of intermediate steps. There were such steps, however. The train of reasoning ran, ‘Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. ”

“ The comparative richness of the results of Army medical research was attributed, in part, to the fact that "the civilian profession, while frequently establishing the principles used as a basis for disease control, lack the opportunity to prove their worth which are offered the military by reason of the latter's contract with bodies of troops under discipline." ”

“ Answer, It is not only expedient, but necessary that a physician should have a general and extensive knowledge of the whole art, and be acquainted with the principles of every branch of his profession Thus the general of an army should be acquainted with every part of military science, and understand the whole detail of military duty, from that of colonel down to a private centinel. But there is no need that he should act as a pioneer and dig in a trench. Where a proper subordination is wanting, there is a perversion of all practical knowledge. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No portion of the military service has been more misrepresented than the medical department. An opinion seems to prevail quite extensively that the army surgeon is generally a young graduate, vain of his official position, who cares little for the health of the soldier, and glories in the opportunities afforded by a battle for reckless operations. ”

“ It is not reasonable to expect successful administration in time of war of a department which lacks a third of the number of officers necessary to perform the medical service in time of peace. We need men who are not merely doctors; they must be trained in the administration of military medical service.
Our navy must, relatively to the navies of other nations, always be of greater size than our army. We have most wisely continued for a number of years to build up our navy, and it has now reached a fairly high standard of efficiency. ”

“ The medical department is governed by a director-general, who is a member of the War Office, and has charge of the surgical, medical, and sanitary arrangements of the army. In the United States every military post has at least one medical officer and sometimes two, as the nature of the climate or the strength of the command demands, all of whom are under the command of a surgeon-general, who ranks as brigadier-general, and is permanently established at Washington, D. C. He has full control over everything that pertains to the medical department of the army. ”

“ One can be sure that the record of the past will serve as an inspiration to those individuals responsible in the future for the destiny of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and its important role in advancing military medicine. ”

“ Yet, taking them all in all, the military ‘cut up’ better than any other professionals. The doctors might be agreeable; they know a vast deal of life, and in a way too that other people never see it; but meet them en masse, they are little better than body-snatchers. ”

“ Many doctors come into the Navy from civil practice, as Medical Reserve officers for the duration of the war, and wonder at first how they are going to carry on without women nurses, and in the small confines of a fighting ship. The first discovery they all make — and admit with a simplicity that is quite touching to a doctor of the regular Navy — is that the hospital corpsmen, some of whom are lads less than twenty years old, who were students, plumbers, shoe clerks, morticians' helpers, and welders before they enlisted, make most efficient, dependable, and loyal nurses. ”

“ An even broader concept of the place of the Institute of Pathology in the general scheme of military medicine after passage of the National Security Act of 1947 resulted from the appointment and deliberations of the Committee on Medical and Hospital Services of the Armed Forces. ”

“ It was shouted to him in vigorous Anglo-Saxon, what we thought of doctors anyhow, and that if he didn’t look sharp we’d fix him so he would need a doctor, himself, to patch him up. The Doctor rode off laughing at the storm his friendly remarks had raised. Never was a kind offer more ungraciously received. I suppose, however, if any of us had got hurt just then, we would have been glad enough to fall in with the Doctor, and to have his skillful care. Fact is, soldiers are very like citizens—set light by the doctor when well, but mighty glad to see him when anything is the matter. ”

“ The achievements in the field of discovery of the chemist, the physicist and the biologist have given the military surgeon an advantage in diagnosis and treatment which was denied to his predecessors, and we are able to measure the effects of these advantages when we come to appraise the results which have been attained. ”

“ Such a center, the Committee reported, was an "urgent and immediate" need, due to the "comprehensive and global nature of modern military medicine" if the Medical Department was "to fulfill its mission of protection and care of troops, to keep pace with worldwide developments of significance to military medicine and to maintain a productive relationship with the medical profession at large * * *. The Army Institute of Pathology and medical museum are presently housed in an antiquated building which seriously limits the important functions of this institution. ”

“ No Person ought to be appointed a Physician to the Army, or Military Hospitals, without previously undergoing the same Examination at the College of Physicians, as those do who enter Fellows and Licentiates of the College, that none but proper Persons may be employed. ”

“ The term of my apprenticeship being expired, I devoted myself for four years to a military life, principally with a view to become more skillful in my profession; being engaged, the whole of that time, in a very extensive practice in the army, amongst diseases of every kind. The last five years I have spent in Europe, under the most celebrated masters in every branch of Medicine, and spared no labour or expence to store my mind with an extensive acquaintance in every science, that related any way to the duty of a physician ”

“ Most of these men were pushed so hard that only an army officer perfectly confident of what he was doing and well aware that all of his men had been thoroughly examined by a physician and had nothing organically wrong with them would have dared to do it. A good many of us had the chance to see how university men took the military regime. ”

“ Inestimable facts of treatment are learned by watching, at the same time and in the same place, a ward full of patients ill of the same disease. People of all countries know this by the special learning which their physicians obtain in large civil hospitals: and the same thing happens in military hospitals, with the additional advantage that the information and improved art tend to the special safety of the future soldiery, in whatever climate they may be called on to serve.
There has long been some general notion of the duty of army-surgeons to record what they saw in foreign campaigns ”

“ In much the same way as the activities of the American Registry extended beyond the strictly military aspects of the Institute into fields of civilian medicine, so the Medical Illustration Service had responsibilities which were broader than the limits of the Institute. ”

“ I have had the privilege of being a physician for early forty years. Half of that time was spent on active duty in the military services and the other half was spent in the civilian sector. I have participated in the delivery of health care in every conceivable setting: in a battlefield tent in Korea ”

“ The fourth member of the military staff is the Surgeon, who with his four assistants, medical officers of the Army, watch over the health of the command. Under his charge is the hospital for cadets, and that for enlisted men.
The Surgeon has authority to excuse an officer or cadet from any duty whatsoever on account of illness. In the eyes of the cadets he stands as the guardian of the Gates of Paradise. When the body is fatigued, or one’s head is choked up and eyes running from a bad cold, illnesses that in reality do not incapacitate one for duty, to have a nice sympathetic Dr. ”

“ The profession of medicine, and surgery, must always rank as the most noble that men can adopt. The spectacle of a doctor in action among soldiers, in equal danger and with equal courage, saving life where all others are taking it, allaying pain where all others are causing it, is one which must always seem glorious, whether to God or man. ”

“ On 24 September 1863, four young Army medical officers then on duty in Washington, some of them being connected with the Museum and "wishing to make that institution at once practically useful," asked Acting Surgeon General Barnes for "permission to deliver a course of lectures on military medicine and surgery in the hall of the Museum." Such a course would be particularly advantageous, they suggested, because of the large number of medical cadets and junior medical officers on duty in the hospitals in the Washington area. ”

“ He will be examined by a medical officer, who will ascertain whether he is free from all bodily and organic defects, and whether, as far as regards physical constitution, he is in every point of view fit for military service. ”

“ In response to this call, some who were whole and needed not a physician, as well as those who were sick, reported at the surgeon’s tent for prescriptions. Much used to be said by the soldiers in regard to the competency or incompetency of army surgeons. It was well understood in war time that, even though an examination of fitness was required of surgeons to secure an appointment in the army,—at least in some States,—many charlatans, by some means, received commissions. ”

“ Nay, many even of the well-educated surgeons sent out were for some time of little use, for superior professional skill is of little value in comparison of experience in military arrangement; where one soldier dies from the want of a delicate operation, hundreds perish from the absence of military arrangement. ”

“ Although these affections are not likely to come often under the treatment of the surgeon in civil life, yet they are of much importance to the naval or military practitioner, since an accurate knowledge of them will lead him to institute a careful inquiry when a man complains of inability to sustain the fatigue of marching with the burden of a heavy knapsack ”

“ This department of an army, next to the commissariat, is the most important of all the non-combatant sections. The surgical treatment of the wounded in actual fighting, and still more the combat with disease engendered by crowding, unhealthy stations, and the reckless habits of the soldiery, necessitate a large medical staff; for, on an average of the whole army, it is found that the rate of sickness is at least quadruple that for the civil population. In the British army every battalion, when at home or in the temperate zone, has a surgeon and an assistant-surgeon ”

“ In its aims and purposes, the Institute represents the hard core of our attack on disease and war injuries which ordinarily take such a terrific toll of military effectiveness * * *. In these days of increasingly devastating conflicts, this institution will become of even greater importance than during the past. New types of warfare, including atomic weapons, make additional pathological facilities mandatory for the prevention and treatment of casualties. ”

“ Men, in Time of Service, are often apt to saunter in and about Hospitals, and there learn all Manner of Debaucheries, and lose all Sense of Discipline; and therefore, to keep up Order and Decorum, there ought to be, at every Fixed and every large Military Hospital, a military Inspector or Commander, an Officer of known Activity and Probity; and a Number of Officers on convalescent Duty sufficient to form a Court-Martial whenever required.
The Duty of the Military Inspector, or Commander, should be, to take Care of all Convalescents on Billet ”

“ Rigid examinations have been conducted, in the first instance by the physicians connected with the exemption boards, but later at the camps, in order to eliminate from the ranks men whose physical condition did not justify their retention in the military service. ”

“ When I look at these ranks, you Generaloberstabsarzt Handloser, are to be envied; medical experts, with the best and most highly trained special knowledge, are at your disposal for care of the soldiers. In reciprocal action between yourself and your medical officers, the problem of our medical knowledge and capacity are kept alive. ”