211

The Pride of the Medical Department X

The Pride of

the Medical Department

1926_1929

“I did not know how to value (the life)

of a sick or wounded soldier by any pecuniary standard.”1

The Congress apparently failed to visualize permanent extension of the Veterans 

Administration into a gigantic adventure in socialized medicine. As the Army Medical 

Department was anxious to replace the temporary war service buildings at Walter 

Reed with permanent structures, an arrangement was worked out whereby the 

Veterans Administration supported the construction program, on the understanding 

that Veterans beneficiaries would be hospitalized on pro rata costs, changed, in 1926, 

to a flat rate of $4.15 per inpatient day.2

The rather generalized hospital cost accounting system used by the Medical 

Department included charges for the pay and allowances of officers; pay, allowance, 

and subsistence of nurses; pay, subsistence and clothing of enlisted men; pay of civilian 

employees, and rations when provided; subsistence (for sick in hospital only); medical 

supplies; and miscellaneous items such as laundry, utilities, light, water, heat, telephone 

services, maintenance and repair of buildings and grounds. The total of all accountable items enumerated, divided by the number of inpatients, established the cost per 

inpatient day. This was, in 1926, $4.83.3

Thus the Medical Department apparently lost on the cash emoluments incident 

to hospitalizing Veterans cases, but from the long-range viewpoint the ledger remained “in the black,” for during the 1925–26 session of Congress, $1,050,000 of 

a total $2,000,000 was appropriated for permanent construction at Walter Reed 
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X Borden’s Dream

alone,4 and other Army general hospitals profited similarly. The temporary wards 

immediately behind the Main Building were removed during the year, in order to make space 

for the laboratory requirement of a regular ward for basal metabolism work, where patients 

could spend the night, and a mortuary chapel and receiving room, out of sight of the hospital 

wards.5

 The old stone gatehouse, landmark of the Shepherd dynasty, was razed, and some of 

the stones were used for walks in various parts of the grounds.6 On July 2, 1926, the last issue 

of The Come Back appeared; old times and old landmarks had changed.

The bed capacity of the five general hospitals then operated by the Medical Department 

remained relatively constant during this period. Of the 1200 permanent or, in Army parlance, 

“fixed” beds allotted to Walter Reed, with a stand-by or expansion quota of 360,7 the fiscal 

accounting of June 30, 1926, showed that 758 were occupied.8 War Department General 

Staff planning figures for bed authorizations usually provided a fifteen per cent dispersion 

factor for emergency overflow, and so during the tranquil late twenties the hospital was able 

to admit all eligible applicants. By and large, however, the number of Veterans’ beneficiaries 

equaled the combined military admission of both officer and enlisted men.

Some of the medical officers on duty at Walter Reed during this period believed this group 

of patients more of an administrative liability than a professional asset. It was customary 

1925, X-ray (interior view)
Post Orchestra, Army Medical Center

213

The Pride of the Medical Department X

practice to use ambulatory enlisted patients for light ward duties, such as carrying 

specimens to the laboratory, pushing wheel chairs or acting as messengers, and such 

tasks were usually discharged with good will and a spirit of helpfulness. The situation 

was occasionally different with Veterans, however, for military disciplinary channels 

were no longer operative. Some, as was to be expected in any large group, were malingerers, and they cared little for routine ward work; others were notably anxious to 

prolong their period of hospitalization, for Walter Reed was known for its excellent 

food service and pleasant surroundings. A few were always sensitive to fancied wrongs, 

which were referred to sympathetic Congressional supporters.

Unlike civilian hospitals, with their appreciably shorter periods of hospitalization, 

the intimate personal relations between doctor and patient, and the divergent classes of 

patients admitted, military patients were predominantly a homogeneous group as to sex, 

occupation, salary and social security. Thus the mores and behavior pattern of the well 

soldier to a large extent were unchanged by transfer to the medical Post. Harmlessappearing card games became high-stake blackjack games when the ward officers or nurse 

disappeared in their private offices, and on occasion “Hiram and Johnny Walker” snuggled 

under more than one pillow or carelessly draped lounge suit in bed-cupboard.
214

X Borden’s Dream

Regardless of stringent Post Regulations, there was usually a willing visitor or nimble cab 

driver who could be persuaded to carry contraband, including narcotics, and so the 

twelve-hour duty for the medical officer-of-the-day was far from tranquil, and many 

became as adept with the stomach pump as General Arthur had been in his early days 

at Vancouver Barracks. It was not unusual to have benevolent metropolitan police-men 

deliver to Walter Reed’s “noble façade,” patients who were not only inebriated but 

indigent–for want of a better place to send them. Fearful and quavering was the young 

doctor who inadvertently admitted such cases, especially repeaters, and then had to 

justify his lack of judgment to his praeceptor, the canny Ernest R. Gentry, for once admitted the men were difficult to discharge. Only a few of the cases were misances, but 

many were chronic, requiring domiciliary care. After their value as teaching mate-rial, 

the staff preferred new clinical problems.

During 1926, there were 751 patients on the Neuropsychiatric Section.9

 Diagnostically, the cases were preponderantly dementia praecox, psychoneurosis and constitutional psychopath. The malarial treatment for paresis and cerebro-spinal syphilis was 

used in nineteen cases, therapy that held “out more hope for good than any other form 

of treatment heretofore used.”10

The total number of medical admissions decreased during this period; nevertheless 

the clinical investigative program reflected the progressional advances in therapy used 

in civilian hospitals. Recognition of Diabetes Mellitus, once a hopelessly debilitating 

1927, Presentation of Bible, Christian Endeavor Society, for Chapel use.
215

The Pride of the Medical Department X

disease, was increasingly easy and forty-eight cases were reported as improved under 

treatment and dietary care. Further, the cardiovascular section performed 210 electrocardiograms, and the laboratory completed 132,495 procedures.

Of the 3,343 surgical operations, 2,080 were EENT; 108 were genito-urinary; and 157 of 

the 270 gynecological patients had some form of surgery. The Dental Service, still under 

administrative supervision of general surgery, had departments of clinic dentistry, prosthesis, 

oral surgery and dental roentgenology, and during 1926 treated a total number of 2,376 military 

patients in 12,646 sittings, and 3,093 “others” in 10,826 sittings.11 In harmony with the general trend toward more complete clinical investigations, the Department of Roentgenology, 

renamed from X-ray, made 10,387 examinations and gave 623 Roentgen ray treatments.

The Personnel Quotient

Medical Department Tables of Organization and Equipment,12 provide specific allowances of personnel for installations of stated bed size. Thus the assignment of doctors, nurses, 

enlisted technicians, orderlies, etc., is not a haphazard affair but is controlled at the source 

of manpower intake – the Surgeon General’s Office. The current T/O provided 516 enlisted 

men for duty at the Army Medical Center, with the detachment strength averaging 

only 510 for the year. The enlisted men not only performed technical and nursing 

1927, First Easter Sunrise Service, Nurses and Corpsmen form “The Living Cross”
216

X Borden’s Dream

duties, but they also maintained much of the equipment and serviced various Center 

activities. Manpower was not in short supply, and approximately forty per cent of the 

corpsmen completing their enlistment re-enlisted at their home station.

The Hospital Corps barracks at Walter Reed, Building No. 7, was superior to many 

such accommodations on other military posts. The building was attractively furnished, 

the food service good, and if the Regular Army monthly “take home” pay seemed meager in comparison to the cash salaries of civilians, the money was clear, for clothing, 

food, medical service and other amenities were provided by the government. Civilian 

clothes could be worn in off-duty hours, and while amusements were available on the 

reservation, the Georgia Avenue street car line provided easy access to the city. Duty 

at the Center was unusually pleasant, and if some of the young ladies of Washington 

learned to their surprise that their handsome dates from the hospital were not doctors, 

as they may have been led to believe, few seemed to have cared. To some of the shorthaired, long-waisted “flappers” of the day, the ability to do the Charleston was of more 

consequence than the prestige of a learned profession.

The Rea swimming pool was usable only during the summer months. First provided 

as part of the rehabilitation program for World War I patients, the schedule was by 

then so arranged that all classes of Post personnel used it freely. Movies were shown 

at the Red Cross House and the YMCA, but the Knights of Columbus Hut was used 

only for religious services, by the resident priest, and on Sundays. The Post Exchange, 

in the basement of the Red Cross, was renovated and a lunch counter and soda fountain were added. A restaurant was operated as part of the Service Club or Guest House 

management, maintained for the families of sick patients. Of the two barber shops on 

the Post, one was in the Red Cross House and the other was in the main barracks, for 

the easy accommodation of the men.13

Recruit training was based on Section III, General Order No. 4, 1921, and Medical 

Department Bulletin No. 18. The 120 hours of instruction covered a six-month period 

and included orientation in such subjects as military courtesy, the Articles of War, Army 

Regulations, personal hygiene, physical training, first aid, anatomy, physiology, nursing, 

school of platoon, shelter tent pitching, personal equipment, functions and relations of 

the Medical Department to the line, litter drill (loaded and unloaded) general orders 

of a sentry, guard duty and guard mount. Special instruction was given for promotion as junior non-commissioned officers and to candidates for sergeancy. On-the-job 

training for assignments as technicians for the X-ray, laboratory and dental (including 

property) sections was conducted by the various hospital departments in question, 

with the successful competitors given appropriate technical ratings or promotions on 

recommendation from the departments. “The general health of the command (was) 

good,” stated the Post Commander in the Annual Report. “The number of sick days 

lost in hospital (was) due to the time cases (were) detained rather than to the number 

of new cases admitted.”14
217

The Pride of the Medical Department X

The Happy Hours

For years there had been innumerable complaints from the Dietetic Department 

over the lack of food storage space, which necessitated day to day buying, as well as the 

penetrating odors that seemed to steep certain portions of the Main Building with a permanent aroma of cookery. On December 28, 1927, the north annex to the Main Building 

was opened and provided not only ample space for storage, but a commodious kitchen 

and dining hall, Mess II, wards for the Ear, Nose and Throat department, and space for 

a permanent hospital library.

Securing adequate space for the library had become a pressing question, for the old Ward 

32 was foredoomed to make way for the new east wing of the Main Building. Further, the 

collection of books in the officers’ waiting room, adjoining the Commanding Officer’s Office 

and known as the Medical Library, had long since outgrown its space.15 Opened on April 1, 

192816 and occupying a 50 x 100 foot section below the new Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat wards, 

the new Library was a gem of architectural planning. The open book shelves were so arranged 

that one-fourth of the room was partitioned off to form a professional library, which while 

not sound proof, was at least an off-bounds area for all but professional personnel.

1932, Rose Arbor
1927, Entrance to Kitchen Area; Right: first floor, Mess II; second floor, Library; third floor; 

EENT Wards.

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X Borden’s Dream

The Library and librarians, Misses Schick and Gould,17 occupied a special place in 

the hospital activities, for more often than not some of the doctors and favored 

patients stopped by for afternoon tea, a delightfully informal little back-room ceremony 

that marked the close of a long day on the wards. The longer stay of military hospital 

cases encourages a comradeship and familiarity with the staff less easily secured in the 

hurried and impersonal atmosphere of the great civilian hospitals. And regardless of the 

large number of technical library procedures carried on behind the scenes or in the early 

morning hours, the librarians always managed to appear unhurried and gracious. The 

dilettante scholars and musicians among the patients and staff came to feel that The 

Library was their own serene sanctuary, and there was always a select group of congenial spirits to discuss literature and the arts. Some discussed the Wall Street news and 

soul-shaking world events, and some discussed their own soul-shaking problems. If they 

leaned too long on the lectern, they were gently and graciously dismissed without quite 

knowing how or when the turn in small talk reminded them of other obligations.

There were few medical librarians as such at this time, for Library Schools offered 

no special courses in this field. And in spite of Miss Edith Kathleen Jones’ book on 

Hospital Libraries, there was not such a marked pseudo-scientific trend toward 
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The Pride of the Medical Department X

bibliotherapy as that which began to develop in the late thirties. The average librarian’s 

medical knowledge was like the gaps in a crossword puzzle, for medical nomenclature 

and a somewhat haphazard knowledge of clinical symptoms was self-acquired through 

handling of medical journals issued to the staff or cataloging medical texts. The Walter 

Reed Library was one of the largest and best organized in the reconstruction program, 

and Miss Schick was well known to her contemporaries in the hospital library work.18

One unusually shy but attentive bachelor officer member of the Library group visited 

regularly for some weeks while undergoing a physical survey, then suddenly his daily trips 

ceased. If the librarians noted his absence, they assumed that he had been reassigned 

to duty on his former post. When he reappeared some three weeks later, pale, wan and 

walking with a one-sided gait, it was an occasion for rejoicing, and he endured a jovial 

scolding over his long neglect. Embarrassed over the friendly attention and hedging 

his answers, the young man finally confided that he had been one of Colonel Keller’s 

surgical patients. “Oh-oh, an operation!” exclaimed the self-educated library student of 

the medical arts, “Well, it’s better to have it behind you than in front of you,” she said, 

and wondered at his shocked expression and at his hasty departure.19 This occasion 

marked the shy young officer’s last visit to the Post Library, and it was several weeks 

before his one-time confidante learned that he had undergone a hemorrhoidectomy, 

the then popular high compound enemas and all.

Installation Support

A new Red Cross building was also completed, but not released to the government 

until 1928. The East and West wings to Building No. I were still incomplete, but the 

Quartermaster was alert to his responsibility for such a large and increasingly complicated 

construction program. Cost data, reports and blueprints were brought up-to-date, and all 

building systems over and under ground were appropriately identified as governmental 

or commercial. Reservation maps and a block plan were made for separating steam, 

water, gas, electric, sewage and drainage systems.20 Sewage was removed by the District 

of Columbia system and the garbage by city trucks. All water used at the Center came 

from the Potomac, through the Washington aqueduct of the U.S. Engineer Department, 

and it was both potable and adequate.21 All trash and refuse was burned in the Post 

incinerator, and, since some horses were still stabled on the Post, the manure was stored 

in concrete pots, sealed for fermentation and later used as fertilizer.22

Post Headquarters administration apparently presented few problems at this time, 

and the principal grievance of the Post Commander concerned the old and inadequate 

laundry equipment. Standard medical supplies were requisitioned from the Medical 

Supply Section of the New York General Depot, and the allowance was adequate. 

Moreover, the monetary allowance provided by the Surgeon General’s Office, under 

the two-year Replacing Medical Supplies fund established in 1906, was adequate for all 

needs.23 It was used mainly for the purchase of nonstandard items such as drugs and new 

equipment which the testing laboratories had not had time to approve and add to the 
1929, New Red Cross Building and West Wing, Main Building

Power House, 1929

220

X Borden’s Dream
221

The Pride of the Medical Department X

Surgeon General’s catalogue of standard supplies. War surplus supplies were gradually 

being exhausted, including the much-deplored paper bandages,24 and the new supplies 

were considered vastly superior. In 1928, when furnishings and equipment were 

purchased for the new wards, the bedrooms were equipped with Simons metal furniture. 

The solariums received the then popular wicker furniture, which soon proved a burden 

to the exterminator experts. Even the old wooden refrigerators were being replaced by 

electrical equipment that was “a big improvement over the old unsanitary ice box.”25

Mess II, Convalescent (enlisted) Patients’ Dining Room

Six separate messes (food services) were in operation; the Post had four miles of roads of 

which more than fifty per cent were concrete, and a concrete-curbed parking lot adjacent 

to the formal gardens. Of the male personnel assigned to the Army Medical Center in 1927, 

322 officers and 535 enlisted men were assigned to Walter Reed; eleven officers and forty-nine 

enlisted men were assigned to the Army Medical Center Headquarters; and fifteen officers, 

sixty-eight enlisted men and thirty students were assigned to the Army Medical School.26

The Quartermaster’s work orders, that is current maintenance, showed that 5,325 shop 

activities were completed during the calendar year 1927. The Fire Department, usually 

considered an inactive group, extinguished fifty-six minor fires, most of which 
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X Borden’s Dream

resulted from careless disposal of cigarette butts and matches. This section was staffed 

by civilians, but the principal labor force was drawn from the Walter Reed detachment, 

whose versatile qualities were eulogized by the Quartermaster officer:

The enlisted medical personnel have proved themselves good apprentices, willing and 

ready at all times to carry on their work. The enlisted men on the paint detail have done 

exceptionally good work. In many cases they have applied as much paint and covered as 

much surface in as neat a manner as the painters working for a commercial firm.27

Officer Pavilion No. I, a medical ward during World War I, was converted into a general 

Post Exchange. Conveniently located across from the one-time “Pest House,” so-called in 

Colonel Birmingham’s day, but by 1927 a separate and well-equipped obstetrical ward, it 

was near to both the permanent and the frame barracks, and in time it became the off-duty 

social center for the Detachment. Extensions were added to the Medical Supply Warehouse 

and to the Guard House. The deep scar of Cameron’s Creek had long since been covered28

over by the formal garden, but a further “face-lifting” occurred in 1928, when a gleaming 

white pergola was added.29 By 1929, Building No. 34, the old mortuary, was demolished, 

and some of the early permanent quarters were razed to provide space for a new Isolation 

Ward or Infectious Disease Section.

The East Wing of Delano Hall, the nurses’ residence destined to be the envy of all the 

Army hospitals, was completed in November 1929. As it was designed for gracious living, it provided single rooms, with a connecting bath for each two rooms assigned to the 

general staff nurses, and a suite of living room, bedroom and bath for the Chief Nurses. 

Final completion of the structure in 1934 included well furnished sitting rooms, lounges, 

recreation rooms, kitchenettes, pressing rooms, and a grand ballroom of unusually magnificent proportions.

Mrs. Julia O. Flikke was Chief Nurse at Walter Reed during the late twenties and early 

thirties, and her staff, on December 31, 1928, included 104 Regular Army Nurses. As the 

principal Chief Nurse, Mrs. Flikke held the relative rank of Captain, Army Nurse Corps, and 

the eight Chief Nurse assistants held the relative grade of First Lieutenant. Eighty Regular 

Army Nurses in the grade of Second Lieutenant and fifteen reserve nurses performed the 

principal bedside nursing duties for 7,448 patients.30 They were, however, generously assisted by the hospital corpsmen and to some extent by the one hundred eighteen student 

nurses then on duty at the hospital.31 Of the 1200 beds, the maximum occupancy occurred 

in the “pneumonia months” of January, February and March:32

Month Officers Nurses EM VB Civ. Total

January 67 4 313 436 112 932

February 80 8 297 440 114 939

March 91 8 318 412 113 942
223

The Pride of the Medical Department X

Re-evaluating Subsidized Education

In spite of the bedside nursing service rendered by the students, the Army School 

of Nursing had become something of a morale and administrative burden to the 

Medical Department.33 Nearly one-fourth of each class remained away from the 

parent institution in order to complete affiliated training in subjects not adequately 

provided at Walter Reed but required for examination and licensing by the various 

State Boards of Nurse Examiners. This was not only a costly procedure for the 

Medical Department, but of the 755 students who graduated from 1921_1929, only 

182 accepted appointments in the Army Nurse Corps, and twenty-three of this number were appointed in 1927_28. Of the 182, only fifty-four were still in the Corps,34

slightly more than nine per cent of the total number of 509 Regular Army Nurses 

(supported by an additional 190 reserve nurses35). Thus the Army School of Nursing 

was not contributing markedly as a replacement factor for nursing personnel but 

was benefiting the civilian communities.

The academic program provided for the students had, moreover, affected the 

morale of the regular nursing staff at Walter Reed to some extent, for the School had 

a separate educational director, rules, regulations and working hours which some of 

the Regular Army Nurses considered unnecessarily favorable. The Superintendent 

of the Army Nurse Corps, Major Julia C. Stimson, was a well-known figure in the 

nursing education circles of the national nursing organizations, and many of the 

older Army Nurses, graduates of the regular three-year training programs, believed 

that the Army School of Nursing was of greater interest to her than other Corps 

problems.36

Mrs. Flikke apparently had only an administrative association with the Army 

School of Nursing, in spite of being the senior nurse on the staff. A precise, softspoken woman, she was in no sense an agitator for educational reforms, and many of 

her contemporaries believed she accepted the nurse’s role as functional rather than 

military and that she did not believe women should be an integral part of the Army. 

Reserved, trim and immaculately groomed, she was particular about minute details and 

ably managed her staff with a detachment that some nurses found exasperating.37

Prior to World War I, nurses had not mixed socially with the medical staff to any 

great extent.38 Social trends had changed for the better, however, and the relative rank 

status of the Army Nurse Corps, secured by the national nursing organizations, gave 

the women a more definite military standing. These factors, plus Surgeon General 

Ireland’s warm championship of Major Stimson, affected the prestige of the Army 

Nurse Corps as a whole. Mrs. Flikke was both personable and tactful, and so she 

undertook what was essentially the role of official hostess for Major Stimson. Thus 

under her expert management Sunday dinner at the nurses’ residence at Walter Reed 

was a pleasantly anticipated ritual for the families of older medical officers in and 

around Washington.39
1929, Construction of new Isolation Ward; tree 

in left rear, behind truck, is Georgie Newport’s 

Catalpa tree

1930, Medical Wards (enlisted); lower floor, third 

building, extreme right later used as Out-Patient 

Clinic

1930, Tuberculosis and Venereal Disease Ward, one 

floor later converted for use as an Obstetrical Ward

1931, First Construction at Delano Hall

224

X Borden’s Dream

Delano Hall, center unit, rear
225

The Pride of the Medical Department X

1929

Faculty of Administration, WRGH

(Left to Right)

Brig. Gen. J.M. Kennedy; Mrs. Julia O. Flikke; Major J.E. Ash, Chf. Laboratory; Colonel W.L. Keller; 

Lt. Col. Ernest R. Gentry; Lt. Col. W.L. Sheep (Exec. Officer); Capt. George Young, MAC, Adjutant

Post Commander Number 12

Brigadier General James M. Kennedy, Post Commander from March 1926 until 

December 1929, was a bluff, hearty man.40 Long an intimate friend of General Ireland, 

he was one of the elite members of the “official family.”41 Although Kennedy had some 

success as a surgeon he was undoubtedly better known as a hospital administrator.42 

Kindly, jovial and deeply interested in patient care, he took infinite trouble to provide 

the small niceties that added so much to the comfort of the sick.43

General Kennedy had been Chief Surgeon of the New York Port of Embarkation 

during the war, and it was generally conceded that he was both a capable administrator 

and a good sanitary engineer.44 Shortly after the war he became the Chief Surgeon of 

the Philippine Division, and it was to his office that the overworked and mentally exhausted 

editor of the Index-Catalogue, Fielding N. Garrison, by then a commissioned officer and 

Lieutenant Colonel in the Medical Corps, was assigned. It was therefore Garrison, the indefatigable letter writer, who in the early twenties provided a word-picture of the man later to 
226

X Borden’s Dream

command the Army Medical Center. “Colonel Kennedy, our Chief is a man of broad mind 

and generous disposition, with the sweetness of temper that big broad-gauge men of large 

physique usually have, and he has given me some extraordinary work to do.”45 The extraordinary work, for Garrison had never practiced medicine, was cooperative work with the Army’s 

third Tropical Disease Board, whose members arrived in Manila in September 1922; and to 

another friend he wrote, “I have the good fortune to have a military chief who is an aristocrat 

and a gentleman, a man who is used to having vassals. Working for such a man, certainly the 

nicest man I have ever worked for, I find my duties intriguing and engaging.”46

Convivial and cheerful, General Kennedy tried with almost child-like anxiety to be a model 

of all the virtues which “Noisy Jim” had represented, and so he asked his executive officer to 

remind him quietly when he showed signs of straying from the path of dignity, which tried his 

inclination for bluff, warm-hearted comradeship.47 He may have lacked his predecessor’s 

fine sensitiveness to nature, but he carried 

out, to a large extent, the carefully laid plans 

for beautifying the grounds.48 The hospital 

was famed for its beautiful gardens and well 

stocked greenhouses, and General Kennedy 

instituted the practice of sending flowers to 

all women and children on the second day 

after admission to the hospital, and of having 

flowers placed on the caskets of all destitute 

and friendless soldiers who died at Walter 

Reed.49 He was not well during his last year 

as Post Commander, but as General Ireland 

was approaching the retirement age, “Big 

Jim” remained on duty regardless of his own 

infirmities. In December 1929, he requested 

transfer to Letterman General Hospital, 

which he had once commanded, and he died 

there in October 1930.

In the Course of Progress

Special Orders No. 47, Army Medical Center, April 7, 1926, authorized a Professional Board for coordinating the scientific investigations of the School faculty and 

student instruction with prevailing clinical practices at the hospital. General Kennedy 

was nominally President of the Board; actually, Colonel Henry C. Fisher, then Commandant of the School, served as chairman of the group, called the Faculty Board. 

The members included, from the School, the Director of Laboratories and X-ray, with 

the Librarian, a medical officer, serving as recorder, and the Chiefs of Medicine and 

Surgery from the hospital.50

Brigadier General James M. Kennedy, 1926
227

The Pride of the Medical Department X

Doctor R.L. Kahn, Sanitary Corps Reserve, was assigned to the School for a two-week 

period of active duty in 1925, to begin his now famous work with the Kahn precipitation 

tests for detection of syphilis. In June 1926, the Serology Section of the School laboratories 

again began performing all of the Wasserman work for the hospital.51 On August 27, AMC 

General Order No. 8 placed both laboratories under the direction of the School. The KahnWasserman comparative evaluation series continued of paramount interest until 1928. By 

that time the 13,000 cases studied supported the recommendation that both tests be used 

by the Army Medical Department.

Twelve full-time instructors, including one dental and one veterinary officer, and twenty 

part-time instructors were assigned to the School in 1926. In addition to the preparation 

and issue of the stock vaccines, which had justly earned distinction for the Medical Department, the laboratories were now preparing scarlet fever streptococcus toxin for the Dick 

Test for immunization against scarlet fever. Major Nichols was that year completing his last 

assignment as Director of Laboratories and had begun a study of chemotherapy in bacterial infections, which was later prepared for publication by Major James S. Simmons, a still 

little-known Army epidemiologist who was then writing energetically on a number of special 

problems. Nichols was not only concerned with the malarial treatment of paresis, but he was 

still deeply involved in studies of yaws, begun some sixteen years before. Lt. Colonel Craig, 

Director of the Department of Laboratories, published A Manual of the Parasitic Protozoa, 

followed, in 1927, with seven independent articles.

Laboratory work of such an exacting nature required well-trained technical assistants. This 

was an old and annoying problem to the faculty, for the training and retraining of personnel 

absorbed an undue amount of time. Colonel Fisher proposed, therefore, that fixed allotments of specialist ratings for enlisted men would encourage a more permanent interest in 

the work.52 Although not especially interested in the details of the professional programs, 

he was a canny administrator, and during 1926 he inaugurated a program of “constructive 

economy” that saved some $10,000.53

Many of the Army Medical School students were in the younger age brackets, men having recently completed Medical School and internships, and it was becoming increasingly 

difficult to interest them in the basic professional courses, which included medicine, surgery 

and other subjects covered in the undergraduate schools. Their critical attitude was shared 

by some of the older students and a “goodly proportion of the staff, including Generals 

Kennedy and Fisher, and others to such an extent that abandonment of the school or at 

least the part other than post-graduate work was recommended to the Surgeon General.” 

The primary value of the course evolved from the instruction in public health and tropical 

medicine, which were essentially military problems, but such courses were either condensed 

or omitted from the usual Medical School curriculum. In 1927 a meeting was held in the 

Surgeon General’s office to consider closing the basic school course. The viewpoints of the 

Medical School and Medical Field Service School faculties and students were weighed carefully, Surgeon General Ireland finally decreeing a rearrangement of the work so that the 

two branches would supplement each other. Public health and preventive medicine theories 
228

X Borden’s Dream

would be emphasized at the Army Medical School, with the practical application featured 

at Carlisle. By 1929 the instruction in clinical medicine and contagious diseases was omitted, and emphasis was placed on clinical psychiatry and electrocardiography. In the former, 

special consideration was given to the preliminary examination and rejection of mentally 

unstable military applicants.

Aviation medicine was arousing considerable interest by this time, although it was not 

then a regular part of the Army Medical School curriculum. A year later, however, lectures on 

aviation medicine and gas warfare were introduced.54 By 1929 the lectures were supplemented 

by a tour of Bolling Field Air Base, including a brief flight over the city,55 and a special demonstration at the Chemical Warfare School at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland. Colonel Harry 

L. Gilchrist, a one-time medical officer, had achieved distinction in this branch, ultimately 

becoming a Major General and Chief of the Chemical Corps.

The Army Medical School research program was already well known, but the Army 

Veterinary School was just beginning to pioneer in its own field. Major Raymond A. 

Kelser, V.C., not only demonstrated the principle but published, in 1926, a thesis showing that surra, an equine disease prevalent in the Philippines, was transmitted under 

natural conditions by the Tabanus Stratus fly.56 In 1927 he published the first manual 

1929, Dental Technicians
229

The Pride of the Medical Department X

of Veterinary bacteriology, and in cooperation with the Philippine Insular Bureau of 

Agriculture, he produced a vaccine for rinderpest. At about the same time, Captain 

Francois H.K. Reynolds, V.C., began working with Major Simmons and Captain Joe 

H. St. John, M.C., to demonstrate that the aëdes aebopictus was a second dengue 

vector and that the egg of an infected mosquito could not transmit the virus to the 

next generation.

Studies on dental caries had for some years been of interest to dental officers 

assigned to the various Army hospitals, and at Walter Reed the Medical Service 

was always alert for related foci of infections. From 1926 to 1929, Major Fernando 

E. Rodriquez of the Army Dental Corps performed investigations on the bacillus 

acidophilus theory of dental caries, and he was one of the first dental investigators 

to isolate the lacto bacilli from carious teeth.57 The relationship between the hospital 

and School investigation is well illustrated by the seven per cent increase in dental 

work at Walter Reed during 1929.58

The Army Medical Bulletin, published at the Medical Field Service School after 1922, 

served as a literary vehicle for medical officers. It was by no means ample enough to 

include all of the military-medical scientific articles and manuals produced, and 

by 1929 the Army Dental Bulletin appeared 

as a supplement.

Within the thirty-six year period from 

1914–1950, only the ten years of the Glennan-Kennedy administration was one of 

serene and untroubled progress. There 

was no American war, and the great economic recession of the thirties had not 

set in. The joint Army-Veterans Administration hospitalization program made 

Guard House, 1929 Guard House, Interior View

Colonel Russell in Laboratory, AMS.
Congressional funds easier to secure, and the Medical Department experienced its 

first great peacetime building boom. Army doctors were writing on widely different 

subjects, producing articles, manual and texts, and the volume of their literary output 

compared favorably with the work published by civilian scientific foundations having 

similar research objectives.

In addition to the individual assets of some of the outstanding men such as Siler, 

Vedder, Dunham, Craig, Nichols, Russell, Gentry and Keller, there were certain departmental assets that lent prestige to the Corps: five well equipped general hospitals and 

a great many excellent post or station hospitals; a post-graduate medical school and six 

allied health schools, and the Field Service School at Carlisle. The Post Surgeon and 

dispensary doctor were comfortingly familiar figures, men interested in the organization 

to which assigned whether it was Infantry, Cavalry or Artillery. Corps morale was good, 

pay was adequate if not ample. Seniority and experience mainly influenced assignments, 

and for the most part specialization and seniority were inseparable. The select few who 

showed a decided scientific bent were, as scholars ever are, held in awesome respect by 

their juniors. Regardless of the attractive nature of some administrative assignments, 

the distinction of being a hospital commander or the chief of a division in the Surgeon 

General’s Office, the admiration and respect accorded the outstanding scientists of 

the School lingered in memories longer than the exploits of their more active but less 

erudite brother officers. Every effort was made to insure their success, for others shared 

Surgeon General Sternberg’s belief that “Every man in the Corps that had ambition and 

ability should have his chance.”59

References

1. Statement of the Causes which Led to the Dismissal of Surgeon General Hammond, 

pp, New York, 1864, p 6.

2. Annual Rpt TSG... 1926, pg. 292.

3. Ibid, page 296.

4. Ibid, page 295.

5. Annual Rpt WRGH, 1926.

6. Interview with Col. Herbert N. Dean, MAC, Ret., April 12, 1950.

7. Annual Rpt WRGH, 1926.

8. Annual Rpt TSG... 1926, pg 294.

9. Ibid, pg 354.

10. Annual Rpt WRGH, 1926.

11. Ibid.

230

X Borden’s Dream
12. Called T/O & E.

13. Annual Rpt WRGH, 1927.

14. Ibid.

15. “Medical Library in Main Bldg., To Be Moved to Post Library,” The Come-Back, 

April 9, 1926.

16. Annual Rpt WRGH, 1928

17. Mary E. Schick; Juanita Gould.

18. “Post Librarian Speaks at 20th Century Club Luncheon,” The Come-Back, April 19, 1926.

19. Conversation with Miss Mary E. Schick, 1941.

20. Annual Rpt, WRGH, 1928.

21. Ibid, 1926.

22.. Ibid.

23. Ibid, 1927.

24. Interview with Miss Margaret Lower, February 14, 1951.

25. Annual Rpt, WRGH, 1928.

26. Ibid, 1927.

27. Ibid.

28. See photograph in The Come-Back, June 1, 1923.

29. Annual Rpt WRGH, 1928.

30. Annual Rpt TSG... 1928, pg 328.

31. Annual Rpt WRGH, 1928.

32. Annual Rpt TSG... 1928, pg 328.

33. Florence A. Blanchfield, Organized Nursing and the Army in Three Wars, MSS on file 

HD SGO; Interview with Maj. Gen. Robert U. Patterson, MC, Ret., Aug. 29, 1950; 

Interview with Brig. Gen. A.E. Truby, MC Ret., June 27, 28, 1950.

34. Annual Rpt TSG... 1928, pg 326.

35. Ibid, pg 264.

36. Blanchfield, op cit.

37. Patterson interview, op cit; Interview with Jessie M. Braden, June 26, 1950; Miss 

Dora Thompson former Supt., ANC; Lt. Col. Nellie V. Close, ANC Ret; Misses 

Frances Poole and Mildred Johnson, ANC, Ret., June 26, 1950; and others.

231

The Pride of the Medical Department X
38. Interview with Lt. Col. Elida J. Raffensperger, ANC, Ret., June 26, 1950.

39. Personal knowledge of the writer.

40. Interview with Col. James F. Hall, MC, Ret., April 17, 1950.

41. Conversation with Brig. Gen. J.E. Bastion, MC, Ret., Sept. 14, 1950; Hall interview, 

op cit.

42. Hall, Dean interviews, op cit.

43. Conversation with Brig. Gen. William L. Sheep, MC, Ret., April 26, 1951.

44. Dean interview, op cit.

45. Garrison to Welch, Oct. 27, 1922, Collection of the Institute of History of Medicine, 

Welch Medical Library, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.

46. S.O. No. 38-0, W.D. 19 Feb. 1922, and S.O. 85-0, W.D. 12 April 1922, See Army Med. 

Bull. 1929, pg 135, et seq; quote from Ltr Garrison to H.L. Mencken, Collection, 

op cit.

47. Conversation with Brig. Gen. Charles Walson, M.C., Ret., June 25, 1951.

48. Interview with Mrs. Merritte W. Ireland, April 14, 1950.

49. Washington Post, Aug. 18, 1929.

50. Annual Rpt TSG ... 1926, pg 317; SGO 631.-1 (AMS) GG, War Rec. Div. Nat’l Archives.

51. Annual Rpt TSG... 1926, pg 320.

52. Annual Rpt WRGH, 1926; SGO 631.-1 (AMS) GG, War Rec. Div. Nat’l Archives.

53. SGO 631.-1 (AMS) GG, War Rec. Div. Nat’l Archives.

54. Annual Rpt TSG... 1928, pg 315.

55. Ibid, 1929, pg 309.

56. Synopsis of the work of the Army Medical Research Board in the Philippines, 

AMB, 1929, pg 171-173 (quoted).

57. F.E. Rodriquez, Studies in the Specific Bacteriology of Dental Caries, Military Dental 

Journal, Dec. 1922, Vol. V, No. 4 (quoted).

58. Annual Rpt WRGH, 1929.

59. Ltr from Mrs. George M. Sternberg (the Grafton Hotel) to Col. Borden, April 1, 

1920, handwritten, filed in Borden scrapbook.

232

X Borden’s Dream