Medical Science Publication No. 4, Volume 1

These volumes represent complete notes of a course entitled Recent Advancesin Medicine and Surgery conducted by the Army Medical Service GraduateSchool, 19-30 April 1954. The title is a slight misnomer inasmuch as itwas intended by those responsible for the course's design that it reflectprimarily the professional experiences, problems encountered and lessonslearned by the Army Medical Service during the Korean war. To this endthe faculty was selected from individuals "who were there," whomet and successfully coped with the actual problems and, as a result, couldspeak with the authority of personal and intimate knowledge of the subject.The student body was drawn from mature clinicians so that a critical discussionof papers could be had prior to final editing for this volume. The opinionsthus collected are presented neither as infallible nor incapable of furtherimprovement. They are, though, considered to be the best thinking on thesubject at this time and in a literal sense, constitute a history of theprofessional and clinical activities of the Army Medical Service in Korea.

It is hoped that the timely publication of these lessons and their generaldistribution to Reserve training groups, libraries and medical schools,will help to better prepare the next doctors who are called on to treatmass casualties-whether they be as a result of military or civilian disasters.

To the many who participated and gave so unstintingly of time and energiesI wish to say-thank you. Sole credit can never be attributed to any singleindividual for a group type of enterprise but it is desired to make a matterof record the contributions of Colonel William S. Stone, Commandant ofthe Army Medical Service Graduate School when this course was held. Itwas he who recognized the need for such a review and who in addition contributedthe greatest single share of all the necessary planning and execution frominception to end.

WASHINGTON, D. C., 2 August 1954.