The Army Medical Department 1865 1917

The Army Medical Department, 1865-1917, is the third of four planned volumes that treat the time of revolutionary change in the organization of the U.S. Army and in medicine. Mary C. Gillett traces major developments for the Medical Department-from its rebirth as a small scattered organization in the wake of the Civil War, through the trials of the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection, to the entrance of the United States into World War I.

The Army Medical Department, 1865-1917, is the third of four planned volumes that treat the time of revolutionary change in the organization of the U.S. Army and in medicine. Mary C. Gillett traces major developments for the Medical Department—from its rebirth as a small scattered organization in the wake of the Civil War, through the trials of the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection, to the entrance of the United States into World War I.

The third in a four-volume work that covers the history of the Army Medical Department from 1775 to 1941, this volume traces the development of the department from its rebirth as a small, scattered organization in the wake of the Civil War, through the trials of the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection, up to the entrance of the United States into World War I.A time of revolutionary change both in the organization of the U.S. Army and in medicine, the period climaxed with the golden age of Army medicine, when U.S. medical officers played a leading role in research that developed new and effective weapons in the war against epidemic disease. --Foreword.

The third in a projected four-volume work that will cover the history of the Army Medical Department from 1775 to 1941, this volume traces the development of the department from its rebirth as a small, scattered organization in the wake of the Civil War, through the trials of the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection, up to the entrance of the United States into World War l. A time of revolutionary change both in the organization of the U.S. Army and in medicine, the period climaxed with the golden age of Army medicine, when U.S. medical officers played a leading role in research that developed new and effective weapons in the war against epidemic disease. The Army Medical Department, 1865-1917, continues the contributions to the history of military medicine initiated by the preceding volumes.

From the Book's Foreword: Long-awaited, Mary C Gillett's final work The Army Medical Department, 1917-1941, complete her four-volume study covering the years from 1775 to 1941. Although the Medical Department had improved medical standards and practices because of the latest advances in scientific medicine and was making significant progress toward creating an organizational structure and a supply system able to handle the demands of a conflict of any size, its reserves of trained personnel and supplies were seriously inadequate when the nation entered world War I in the spring of 1917. The narrative first describes the struggle of an unprepared department to meet the myriad demands of a war unprecedented size and complexity, then follows postwar efforts to meet the needs of the peacetime army during nearly two decades of continental isolationism and budgetary neglect, and finally covers the brief period of growing awareness of America's involvement in another major conflict and the intensive preparation efforts that ensued.

Public Health and the US Military is a cultural history of the US Army Medical Department focusing on its accomplishments and organization coincident with the creation of modern public health in the Progressive Era. A period of tremendous social change, this time bore witness to the creation of an ideology of public health that influences public policy even today. The US Army Medical Department exerted tremendous influence on the methods adopted by the nation’s leading civilian public health figures and agencies at the turn of the twentieth century. Public Health and the US Military also examines the challenges faced by military physicians struggling to win recognition and legitimacy as expert peers by other Army officers and within the civilian sphere. Following the experience of typhoid fever outbreaks in the volunteer camps during the Spanish-American War, and the success of uniformed researchers and sanitarians in confronting yellow fever and hookworm disease in Cuba and Puerto Rico, the Medical Department’s influence and reputation grew in the decades before the First World War. Under the direction of sanitary-minded medical officers, the Army Medical Department instituted critical public health reforms at home and abroad, and developed a model of sanitary tactics for wartime mobilization that would face its most critical test in 1917. The first large conceptual overview of the role of the US Army Medical Department in American society during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this book details the culture and quest for legitimacy of an institution dedicated to promoting public health and scientific medicine.