"Yes," I said, "they are."
In fact, the admission rate for this condition has been markedly reduced, and the wards in Navy hospitals assigned to these diseases are rather sparsely occupied. However, as I remarked: "There is still something far more efficacious than the 'sulfa' drugs, and that is 'self-denial.'"
However, I am convinced that the lady I have just referred to is one of the isolated cases. The general public interest in medical matters today is not a morbid and sadistic curiosity. It is one more symptom of the trend of public thought, which is to demand more and more accurate and authentic information about whatever concerns the public good.
Essentially, the health of our Navy is a matter in which every thinking American must be concerned.
We have always carried out a program of health education. It is laid down in Navy regulations that the officers and men shall be instructed in personal hygiene, First Aid, and some of the simple laws of preventive medicine. This instruction, also according to regulations, is carried on by the medical officers of the Navy. How important and valuable this program is, is being shown in the daily communiqués from the naval battle fronts, telling of men who are able not only to help their wounded comrades, but to survive shipwrecks, weeks of exposure on rafts, and being cast up on tropical islands where the water supply is questionable at best, and where many tropical diseases are endemic. What brings these men through these trials and dangers is not only their American intestinal fortitude, all of them are armed with knowledge. Somewhere, aboard ship, in naval training stations, or in "boot" camps, doctors wearing the Navy's blue and the gold oak leaves and silver acorns which are the insignia of the Navy Medical Corps have taught these men how to protect themselves, if possible, from infection and disease.
The story I have to tell here is the story of these seagoing doctors and their work. That work goes on in time of peace no less than
