The medical ethnography of the second World War.

ExcepUn so far as the occurrence of large-scale epidemics has provided opportunities for differential observation, there is available little well-accredited information concerning the liability of persons of non-European stock to diseases not commonly current in their normal habitat or of the liability of persons of European stock to diseases prevalent in Africa, Asia, and Oceania. This is necessarily so, because of the paucity of statistical machinery in countries which are not as yet highly industrialized and in countries which have no long tradition of occidental medicine. It is therefore unnecessary to expand the ensuing account by reference to current literature or to emphasize at length the peculiar opportunities which Army hygiene offers for a scientific study of this sort. Information about morbidity and mortality with respect to troops of different ethnic origin supplied by Army medical authorities has evidently two outstanding advantages in so far as: