Beginning, as I have already said, with a peace-time personnel of barely 700 officers, and a peace-time organization, the Medical Department expanded as the army expanded, until, when the Armistice was signed, it was serving 4,000,000 American soldiers at home and overseas and had, in addition, spread its safeguards over millions more of the civil population on both sides of the Atlantic. Several years prior to the war there had been organized a Medical Reserve Corps which included in its membership many prominent physicians and surgeons. The National Guards of the several States also had their respective medical organizations. The Medical Department at the outbreak of the war consisted, therefore, of nine corps: the Medical Corps, the Medical Reserve Corps, the Medical Corps of the National Guard, the Dental Corps, the Dental Reserve Corps, the Dental Corps of the National Guard, the Veterinary Corps, the Veterinary Reserve Corps, and the Veterinary Corps of the National Guard, to which were added before the war had been in progress a month a Medical Corps, National Army, a Veterinary Corps, National Army, a Sanitary Corps, and an Ambulance Corps, making a total of thirteen distinct services in the Medical Department. By the act of August 7, 1917, however, all of the above were merged into the Medical Corps, United States Army, thereby greatly simplifying administration. But it was quickly realized that, even by calling to the colors every medical officer in the Reserve Corps and the National Guard, the personnel would still fall far short of the number required to provide for the proper care and treatment of the enormous armies which were rapidly being placed in the field, for already the Secretary of War had made his celebrated remark: “Why stop with an army of 5,000,000 men?” Some conception of the problem confronting the surgeon-general may be had when I explain that the Medical Department was expected to furnish each infantry division with approximately 111 officers and 1,400 enlisted men. In addition, an enormous number of medical officers was required for the camp, base, and general hospitals which were springing up like mushrooms, almost in a night, throughout the land. In order to obtain these officers it became necessary, therefore, to appeal to the medical profession of the United States and to the various medical societies, the American Medical Association taking a particularly energetic and enthusiastic part in the work of recruiting. The response of the medical men of America was as prompt as it was gratifying. Specialists whose names were as familiar to the public as those of Cabinet officers and who for a single operation received fees equal to the annual salary of an ambassador; obscure country practitioners who made their daily rounds in mud-bespattered buggies and who, as often as not, received their pay—when they received it at all—in produce; prosperous middle-aged physicians with established