Part 34
Even more important than its care of the animals of the army was the work of the Veterinary Corps in protecting the men by guarding the purity of their meat and dairy supplies. The activities of the Meat and Dairy Inspection Service include the inspection of meats purchased for the use of the army at the time of their receipt, while in storage, and upon issue to troops; inspection of storehouses, refrigerators, and methods of operation in handling food therein; inspection of slaughter-houses, butcher-shops, and packing-houses; ante-mortem and post-mortem inspection for soundness and suitability for human food of animals slaughtered; inspection of cows and dairies providing milk, butter, and cheese for the use of the troops. Some conception of the extent and importance of the work of the Meat Inspection Service can be had by remembering that when the war ended, the Packing-House Products Branch of the Office of the Director of Purchase and Storage was purchasing for the use of the army an average of from 15,000,000 to 19,000,000 pounds of meat products weekly. And every carcass, if not every pound, had to be inspected and passed by the Veterinary Corps before it reached the mess-tables of the army. That, in spite of the incredible quantities of meat products which had to be purchased for the use of our forces in the field, and the great distances between the abattoirs and the zone of operations, there was no repetition of the “embalmed-beef” scandal which sullied the history of the war with Spain was due to the efficiency and unremitting vigilance of the men who wore on their collars the insignia of the Veterinary Corps.
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I am perfectly aware that the medical officers who do me the honor to read this chapter will criticise me for the omissions I have made. And such criticism is justified. I have dismissed such important phases of the work of the Medical Corps as the Division of Surgery with a few paragraphs; to the Dental Corps and the Nurse Corps I have been able to devote but a few lines; the Sanitary Corps, the Ambulance Service, and a score of other branches I have merely mentioned. Of the marvellous work performed by our medical officers in plastic surgery, in bone grafting, in the disinfection of wounds, in orthopedics, in the treatment of the blind, the shell-shocked, and the insane, I have written nothing—the subject is too great, the space at my disposal too limited to even attempt it. The most that I can hope to do in the limits of a single chapter is to give my readers the same fleeting, cursory view of the achievements of the Medical Department that one obtains of a countryside from an airplane.
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If America’s losses in the greatest of wars were relatively slight—and they _were_ slight when compared with the appalling casualties suffered by most of the other warring nations—the reason is not to be found in the superiority of American strategy, in the ability of American commanders, or in the excellence of American weapons, but in the efficiency, self-sacrifice, and devotion of the officers, nurses, and men who wore the caduceus of the Army Medical Department. And I know whereof I speak, for I have not only visited French, British, Belgian, Italian, even German, hospitals all the way from La Panne to Montfalcone, thus affording me standards of comparison, but I spent nearly three months in an American hospital on the Marne, I came home on an American hospital-ship, and for nearly three months more I was under the care of army medical officers in the United States. In dressing-stations, field, camp, base, debarkation, and general hospitals I have watched the Medical Department at its work, and the first-hand knowledge thus gained gives me the right to assert that it was the most efficient service of its kind possessed by any army. To its officers and men, and to the devoted women of the Army Nurse Corps, I lift my hat in gratitude and admiration. The American Army and the American people owe them a debt which they can never fully pay.