Healthier Army

Within three months the 100,000 U.S. servicemen now hospitalized in Europe will have been brought home and some 90 Army general hospitals (out of 99) in Britain will be closed. As the main body of the Army Medical Corps moved toward the new main fighting front, Under Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson and Major General Paul R. Hawley, chief surgeon of the European Theater, proudly summarized the Army's medical record in Europe. Army Surgeon General Norman T. Kirk looked hopefully to the future.

Army hospitals in Europe have treated 1,375,000 sick and wounded patients. Of the 375,000 wounded who reached the hospital, 96.1% survived (compared with 92% in World War I); 220,000 of them are now back in service. In rescuing the injured, 2,000 medical corpsmen were killed, 10,000 wounded.

Only 12,000 U.S. Army men have died of disease since the war began (compared with 62,670 in World War I and 336,216 in the Civil War). The Army has had 70 pneumonia deaths (17,047 in 1917-1918).

Chief lifesavers : penicillin, the sulfa drugs, whole blood and plasma, skilled care.

No Cause for Alarm. Diseases in the Pacific are "different," reported General Kirk, but "this should not be considered cause for alarm." The Army "has been preparing for years" to fight these dis eases and has already learned how to keep them to a minimum.

Malaria "has been reduced to one-fourth its incidence in the early part of the war so that the overall death rate from malaria in the Army is .01%. . . . Atabrine has been found more effective . . . than qui nine." Most effective preventive: mosquito eradication by the wonder insecticide D.D.T.

Schistosomiasis is caused by a small fluke found in pools and running streams which in a matter of seconds burrows through the skin and infects the individual. All water found to contain these flukes is posted and personnel is warned not to bathe, wade or wash in it. The flukes, which usually attack the intestines and liver, are rarely lethal. They may cause a fever at first, followed by steady, prolonged discomfort and ill health. One bad schistosomiasis area is Okinawa.

Scrubtyphus, about as serious as louse-borne typhus, is spread by small mites, often present in tall grass. It is fought by burning the suspected area, impregnating clothing with insect powder, keeping skin covered. The Army is working on a vaccine.

Dysentery is caused by intestinal organisms, most of which are spread by flies.Preventive: kill the flies with D.D.T. Treatment: for some types, sulfa drugs and antiserums, for others, ipecac.

Filariasis (aches and swelling in lymph glands and channels) is caused by mosquito-borne worms. Preventive: kill the mosquitoes, keep away from native villages. Before the war, filariasis victims had to recover without help from drugs. Research workers have recently had promising results from antimony compounds.

Dengue (breakbone) fever is rarely fatal but makes its victim miserable with aches & pains for a week or so. There was an epidemic of it in Hawaii two years ago. As it is spread by mosquitoes, it too can be controlled by D.D.T.

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