Harbor hospital boats and ambulances distributed the patients from the ships to the debarkation hospitals. There they were classified according to the sort of treatment they required. There were eighty interior hospitals which received overseas patients. The policy of the Army was to send patients whenever practicable to the hospitals nearest their homes. In the distribution of patients from the ports to the interior hospitals, the Medical Corps operated four hospital trains--three out of Hoboken and one out of Newport News--and twenty unit cars, one of which, attached to a train of regular Pullman or tourist sleepers, enabled such a train to serve as a moving hospital. Each of the regular hospital trains was made up of seven hospital cars, and carried comfortably 141 patients and 31 doctors, nurses, and orderlies. The unit cars were equipped with diet kitchens, in which could be cooked food enough for 250 patients. With this equipment 139,000 overseas patients were handled up to the end of the year 1919, and of these, 103,000 entered the country through the port of New York. On the first anniversary of the armistice thirty-six of the eighty general hospitals had been closed, an indication of the rate of convalescence among the military patients. [Illustration: _Photo from Engineer Department_ AIR VIEW OF PERSHING STADIUM, PARIS] [Illustration: _Photo by Signal Corps_ AMERICAN SOLDIERS AT UNIVERSITY OF GRENOBLE] In its treatment of patients in the military hospitals, the Medical Department of the Army went beyond the realm of pure surgery and medication in order to reconstruct physically and mentally, when necessary, the men left disabled by the war. To this end it enlarged its Sanitary Corps to include persons skilled in physical and occupational reconstruction. The plan permitted the employment by the Corps of civilian women, who, after putting on the distinctive blue uniform adopted for them, were known as reconstruction aides. These women were skilled in two branches of therapy--occupational therapy (the teaching of new occupations to invalids as a curative measure) and physiotherapy (including baths of various sorts, massage, heat and electric treatments, and gymnastics). Most of the general hospitals were fitted with workshops, gymnasiums, physiotherapy departments, and educational buildings. An elementary school system was inaugurated at the general hospitals, and several thousand illiterate patients were taught to read and write during their convalescence. Organized recreational activities were conducted at each general hospital engaging in reconstruction. Outdoor games, setting-up exercises and other gymnastic exercises, military drills, and organized play of many sorts vied with concerts, plays, boxing matches, and other amusements for the interest of the convalescents. One important work of the physiotherapists was to teach men with amputated limbs how to dress,