operated by man. On the most peaceful cruise in friendly waters, the ship's crew are liable to all the wide variety of accidents that happen to men employed in big industrial plants. Steam pipes burst, and men working near them are scalded by the escaping steam. The ship lurches suddenly, and a steward carrying a heavy tray misses his footing on the steel ladder, falls, and limps to the sick bay with a sprained ankle and an assortment of bruises. You have a long run of foul weather, and a dozen seamen develop colds that have to be treated and watched if you don't want to find yourself with several cases of pneumonia on your hands.
Officers and men are engaged in hazardous occupations at all times — in peace as in war, and night and day. They have to handle boats in bad weather, work around the machinery, engine, and firerooms, drill with guns and turrets, handle ammunition, operate aircraft and submarines, and perform a thousand-and-one things which go to make up daily life at sea. At any moment you may get a man brought in for surgical treatment whose arm has been mangled in a baking machine, a case of fracture caused by a fall from a mast or down a hatch, or one with foreign bodies in the eye. Most of these, naturally, occur during storms, when the ship is pitching and rolling. On a large battleship with 1,500 officers and men, two doctors and a dentist share the general practice. The medical officers are sufficiently busy. Twenty thousand patients were treated in the sick bay of one such ship, 10,000 prescriptions dispensed, and 4,500 dental treatments given in a year.
Most of the lads in the forecastle are young. They are husky and sound, as the searching physical examinations they have been put through at recruiting stations and boot camps have proved. But there is no insurance against sudden cases of appendicitis. As a matter of record, there is scarcely a cruise that you don't have at least one appendectomy to perform at sea. You are lucky when the case is brought to you in its initial stages, before the appendix has ruptured. One of the gravest problems facing medical officers aboard fighting ships just now is the men's unwillingness to admit
