Excerpt from The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War, 1928, Vol. 3: Finance and Supply The purpose of this volume is to record the manner in which the Medical Department functioned as a supply department during the World War and to give details concerning Selected articles Of supply. Because of the breadth of the subject, it is manifestly impossible to include herein all matters relating either to the administrative features of the subject or to the supplies themselves. Since this is the first time an attempt has been made to consider fully the his tory of Medical Department supplies, it is appropriate that due consideration be given to the pre-war history of supplies. More especially does this apply to that period of time intervening between the spanish-american War and the World War, for it was during this interval that the Medical Department not only brought its field equipment to a high state of e mciency but also established for itself a reasonable reserve of such equipment. Furthermore, the supply experiences of the Medical Department in connection with the Mexican border mobilization of our Army (1911 - 1916) make a fitting prelude to any considera tion of World War medical supply matters, for the one merged imperceptibly into the other. It is to be regretted that it has been possible, through lack of space, to use only two of the reports of activities Of the medical supply depots in the United States. The report of the New York medical supply depot was chosen as the type depot for description, because it always has been our most important depot and was the parent from Which the others might be considered to have sprung. While its methods of procedure may have differed in certain respects from those of the other depots, and while it is true that some depots handled certain classes Of articles to a preponderant extent, nevertheless the account Of one of these supply depots answers present purposes very well. On the other hand, since the motor ambulance supply depot at Louisville was the only depot of its kind, a chapter has been devoted to it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The influenza epidemic of 1918 killed more people in one year than the Great War killed in four, sickening at least one quarter of the world's population. In Fever of War, Carol R. Byerly uncovers the startling impact of the 1918 influenza epidemic on the American army, its medical officers, and their profession, a story which has long been silenced. Through medical officers' memoirs and diaries, official reports, scientific articles, and other original sources, Byerly tells a grave tale about the limits of modern medicine and warfare. The tragedy begins with overly confident medical officers who, armed with new knowledge and technologies of modern medicine, had an inflated sense of their ability to control disease. The conditions of trench warfare on the Western Front soon outflanked medical knowledge by creating an environment where the influenza virus could mutate to a lethal strain. This new flu virus soon left medical officers’ confidence in tatters as thousands of soldiers and trainees died under their care. They also were unable to convince the War Department to reduce the crowding of troops aboard ships and in barracks which were providing ideal environments for the epidemic to thrive. After the war, and given their helplessness to control influenza, many medical officers and military leaders began to downplay the epidemic as a significant event for the U. S. army, in effect erasing this dramatic story from the American historical memory.