Unfit for Service

"We are faced with the cold fact that about 40% of the young men of our country at ages 21 to 35 are either considered physically unfit to enter training for military service or are fit for limited service only. ... It cannot be said that . . . since the World War . . . the health of young men has improved . . . [although] never before has medical knowledge and skill been at a higher level."

Thus last week spoke Dr. George Canby Robinson, chairman of a conference on national-defense health problems sponsored by Manhattan's Milbank Memorial Fund. Most rejections are for bad teeth. Other defects, in order of prevalence: poor eyesight, diseases of the heart and circulation, deformities of arms and legs, genitourinary and venereal disease, mental and nervous disorders.

Many of the diseases discussed by the doctors in the conference come from poor diet, bad housing, lack of medical care. Rheumatic heart disease and tuberculosis, for example, are most prevalent in slums. Teeth may be weakened by a deficiency of minerals and vitamins, years of neglect. The majority of men rejected by the Army have not been under the care of a physician. Free medical care is almost unobtainable in many small towns and rural communities. Even in New York City there are few free clinics for dental care.

In some localities, men with reportable diseases like tuberculosis and syphilis are followed up by city or State health authorities. But all communities are not so conscientious. Because of lack of funds, health officials in the District of Columbia last week stopped giving X-rays to prospective draftees, even though Washington has a tuberculosis rate well above the national average.

Many prospective draftees whose health is impaired because of lack of medical attention in civilian life could be cured, but only two ways have been suggested to make them acceptable to the Army. Neither way is promising. One way, a plan for "rehabilitation" of rejected men, was proposed last fortnight by Colonel Samuel Joseph Kopetzky, new president of the New York State Medical Society. He suggested that the Army provisionally induct all men with "remediable defects" such as hernia, bad teeth, venereal disease, etc., and establish hospitals to cure them. But the Army's Surgeon General James Carre Magee said, unofficially, no soap--the Army has its hands full already.

Selective Service Headquarters recently proposed an alternative: that prospective recruits have their defects corrected before they are drafted. But many a registrant wants to escape military service, and such "prehabilitation" cannot be made compulsory.

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