The Finance and Supply Division, in charge of medical supply and disbursing officers, pur chases, stores and transports all supplies and material for the Medical Department and dis burses and accounts for its moneys. Medical supplies are issued in definite units and amounts, the supplies to the various units of the medical service and the sizes of original packages being fixed by definite supply tables.
In addition to vehicular units for the trans portation of supplies, other units of transpor tation in the Medical Department during the war included mobile hospitals, wards and oper ating rooms, motor dental units which were offices on wheels, x-ray motor outfits — the modern substitute for the probing methods of old-time military surgery — lorries bearing steam delousing apparatus or disinfectors and laundries. Each regiment had three medical carts. Pack mules carry fixed quantities of supplies. An officer of the newly-created Motot Transport Corps was stationed with each com mand to check up on operation and mainte nance.
As the functions of the department were and are preventive and curative, the Division of Field Sanitation was of great importance, for it recommended sites for camps, looked after mosquito prevention, drainage, water sup ply, ventilation, the disposal of waste and the elimination of flies. Spots near camps where mosquitoes and flies breed were cleaned tip. Each camp had a division or camp surgeon, and, as assistant, a sanitary inspector who had the assistance of a sanitary engineer and from 100 to 200 enlisted men employed in work de signed to protect the health of soldiers. The sanitary engineering section of the surgeon general's office and sanitary engineers of the construction division of the army co-operated in inspections as to the need of increased sani tary facilities and sewage disposal plants. Ditching and oiling still bodies of water and daily spraying with oil of breeding spots were among the duties performed. Much of this work was done in co-operation with the United States Public Health Service within a radius of a mile outside the camps. Buildings where food was prepared or stored were screened, and a report in the late summer of 1918 stated that 22,700,000 square feet of screen had been placed in all the camps and 6,000 fly-traps placed in each camp. This work was largely responsible for the prevention and control of epidemic diseases.
Hygienic standards, collective and individ ual, of troops in camp and in transport on land and sea, were being constantly improved. Hygiene is taught West Point cadets and all commissioned officers, so that they were en abled to teach the enlisted men; moreover, the latter were given instruction by their company officers in first-aid hospital train ing and field hospital work,' this instruc tion being supplemented by drills of sanitary units in the presence of the enlisted men.
Pamphlets and moving pictures were further aids in instructing in hygiene and in the re duction of venereal diseases. In addition to thor ough physical examination, all officers and en listed men of the army under 45 years of age were required to he immunized against typhoid fever. All recruits and all the personnel of a military command were vaccinated against smallpox when the surgeon responsible deemed it necessary. Special units were provided for men with remediable physical defects, special ists aiding the surgeons in charge. Tests also were made to detect malingering.
The precautions and supervision in the camps for the young men taken from civil life into the army resulted in the showing for the week ended 9 March 1918 of an annual death rate from disease of 6.6 per 1,000, a figure be low that of men in civil life ranging from 20 to 39 years of age, the census bureau giving the rate for this class as 6.7. Steady reduction of the disease rate continued in the succeeding months and for the week ended 26 July it was reported that the annual death rate from dis ease, based on combined reports of the Amer ican Expeditionary Forces and of troops sta tioned in the United States, was 1.9 per 1,000 — less than two men per 1,000 per year. The average annual death rate from disease during the two months ending 26 July was 2.8 per 1,000. For the sake of comparison, in the Crimean War the English and French lost 350 of every 1,000 men through disease; in the Mexican War in the 40's the annual death rate from disease of United States troops was 100 per 1,000; in the Civil War, 40 per 1,000 in 1862 and 60 per 1,000 in 1863; in the Spanish War, 25 per 1,000; and in the Russo-Japanese War, 20 per 1,000, this being the lowest previous annual death rate from disease. From statis tics of the executive division of the general staff of the army, it appears that, in the Mexi can War, seven men died from disease to one killed in battle; in the Civil War the dis ease mortality, though greatly reduced, was still nearly double the battle mortality; and in the Spanish War there were more than five deaths from disease to one in battle; and in the first 10 months of American participation in the World War the records of the American Ex peditionary Forces show an exact parity be tween battle mortality and disease mortality, but this is little more than half of the battle mortality and less than a third the disease mortality of the Civil War.