must render a faithful report of all its doings. These monthly returns are carefully scrutinized in Washington and the work of the entire surgical personnel is carefully watched and card-catalogued. Monthly reports from the various commanding officers and from consultants, as well as information picked up here and there, are entered on these cards, so that no officer can remain for any length of time in the surgical service without the department knowing exactly what he is doing and having a very accurate estimate of his ability. When war was declared, the army possessed in the United States two hospitals for general cases, one for tuberculosis, one for rheumatism, and 113 post hospitals, with a total capacity of 6,665 beds. In order to meet the anticipated needs of our great new armies a vast programme of hospital construction was started in August, 1917, and, though it was greatly curtailed after the sudden collapse of the German war-machine, by March, 1919, the Medical Department had at its disposal in the United States alone a total of 130,564 beds. In other words, the capacity of our army hospitals was increased 1,850 per cent in twenty months—a record which is, I imagine, without parallel in the history of medicine. The total number of medical officers, nurses, and enlisted men on duty in these hospitals during the period of the war was equal to the population of Albany, New York, and the number of cases which were treated—2,000,000 in all—was equivalent to the total population of Chicago. These gigantic hospitals, with their cool, clean wards, their ridge ventilation, their wide corridors, their elaborate heating, lighting, water, and fire-fighting systems, are not surpassed by any civil hospitals of their size in the world. To realize this, one has only to visit them. Indeed, it is not the slightest exaggeration to say that the American soldier received the most expensive kind of medical treatment, in hospitals of the finest type, at the hands of physicians and surgeons many of whom had given up princely incomes and leisurely lives in order to work eighteen hours out of the twenty-four at a captain’s or major’s pay.