PREFACE
This volume considers only the more important administrative activities of the Medical Department in the American Expeditionary Forces, for the scope of these and their ramifications were such as to preclude, in the space available, a more thorough discussion. On the other hand, since there is a degree of overlapping of this and other volumes, for example, Volumes VI and VIII, certain administrative matters already covered in these other volumes are not taken up in detail herein. Thus the administrative matters which related to the evacuation service of the Medical Department at the front are considered in Volume VIII; the administrative matters closely connected with sanitation will be found in Volume VI. The purely professional services, though covered briefly in this volume, have been assigned greater space in volumes appropriate to
each subject. The fact that the service of but one hospital center is discussed at some length, though such formations were among the most important of the Medical Department enterprises, illustrates the necessity for compressing the material available.
Certain subjects and activities may seemingly have been unduly slighted. This has been due, on the one hand, to the necessity to avoid unnecessary duplication, or, on the other hand, to the fact that official reports concerning the subjects in question were too fragmentary. Thus, to the chief surgeon`s office, line of communications, the chief surgeon`s office, American forces in France, and the medical activities of some of the sections of the Services of Supply it has been impossible to give the consideration which their importance warrants.
Acknowledgment is made to Lieut. Frank Steiner, M. A. C., for arranging the chapters on the brief histories of hospital centers, base, and camp hospitals.
aFor the purpose of the history of the Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War, the period of war activities extends from April 6, 1917, to December 31, 1919. In the professional volumes, however, in which are recorded the medical and surgical aspects of the conflict, as applied to the actual care of the sick and wounded, this period is extended, in some instances, to the time of the completion of the history of the given service. In this way only can the results be followed to their logical conclusion.
