Abstract

This preface introduces the history of the U.S. Army Medical Department during World War I, both from administrative and scientific standpoints. It notes that work on the history began in the Surgeon General’s Office in 1917 and continued through the war, as well as the intention to publish fifteen volumes. “It should be noted that this is the first comprehensive official war history of medicine which has been published for many years. The only exceptions are the Japanese histories of the part their medical department played in the Chino-Japanese and in the Russo-Japanese Wars.” “…in Civil War days and later, the subject of medical department organization and administration could be touched on lightly for there was comparatively little to tell. Nowadays volumes are required to cover all the complex details, rendered the more complex on account of the distance from our own shores at which the war was fought.”