War Plans

In June 1917, two months after the U. S. had entered World War I, the American Medical Association held a meeting in Manhattan. "We will not repeat the medical mistakes of 1898," said the doctors, feverishly discussing their war plans.

Last week, at the A. M. A.'s first annual meeting in Manhattan since 1917, the doctors grimly faced the prospect of possible participation in another war. This time they pledged themselves not to repeat the medical mistakes of 1917. Unanimously the House of Delegates adopted the mobilization plan of Surgeon General James Carre Magee, of the U. S. Army.

The A. M. A. will immediately start a survey, through its county societies, to determine the health, military fitness, medical specialties of its 117,000 members. A record will be kept of each man willing to serve, whether in the Army or at a civil post. Each State will have a certain quota of volunteers to fill. If war occurs, men will be called by the county societies as they are needed. There will be no haphazard enlistment of individual doctors, as in World War I. Nor will doctors have to learn how to march and drill, as they did in 1917.

Dr. Magee is also signing up medical teams of 100 members, in hospitals all over the U. S. In case of war, these teams, from head surgeon to nurse and orderly, can work as a unit in base hospitals.

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