New-York tribune., 1921-10-23
A War Service
Record of a Base Hospital
in France

LA H. ollAC
H1s1oRY s6sp,g, OF THE PENNsYLvANIA
VAR. Illustrated Published by 'pa Pau
B. Hoeber. s5.
r INCOLN, in the peroration Of his
I greatest address, exhorted his
countrymen "to care for him who
shall have borne the battle" His xef.
ercnce was chiefly, no doubt, to duty
after the war. But certainly no less
urgent Is the appeal to care for the
stricken on the very field of conflict
and in the days that immediately fol-
low. In few respects have the horrors
OF war been SO ameliorated as in the
Improvement of the hospital service.
Before the days of Florence Nightin-
gale the military hospital WAS more
deadly than the trenches. A French
officer who wss there has recorded that
/ in the French hospitals in the Crime a
the death rate was one hundred per
cent. In our Civil War deaths in the
hospitals were more numerous than in
the field. Japan has the credit and
honor OF first applying modern sani-
tary methods, in her war with Russia.
and since then the greatest triumphs
of the healing art have been achieved
IN military hospitals.
Nowhere has military hospital work
been raised to a higher pitch of excel
ience than in the American service in
the Great War, In the base hospitals or
Red Cross, and of these institutions
none was more honorably noteworthy
than the unit of the famous old Penn
sylvania Hospital. The latter institu.
ton is the oldest hospital in America.
having been organized in 1851. with
Benjamin Franklin as the secretary of
its first board of managers, and it has
served the sick and wounded in wars
Ior a century and two -thirds-the
French and Indian War, the Revolu-
ton, the War of 1872, the Mexican
War, the Civil War, the Spanish War,
and finally the Great War OF the Ma
tlons. Both the pride of ancient ira
dltion and the passion for humanity
therefore impelled it to do on this last
and greatest occasion the best Of all
its services.
IL is worthy act to record and to
commemorate in this handsome volume
the achievements of that beneficent or
ganlzatlon in the great hospital camp
which was created at LIE Treport. and
behind the lines in the valley Of the
Marine. At LIE Treport, in what was
formerly an obscure fishing village,
ali the resources of modern science. all
the power Of wealth, and all the zeal
Gus devotion of physicians, surgeons
and nurses, were utilized "to care for
him who had borne the battle" How
efficiently the work was done a single
citation of figures will show. From the
middle Of June, 1917 TO the end of De-
cember, 1918, Base Hospital No. 10 had
charge of British General Hospital No.
16. In those eighteen and half
months there were received 22.431
wounded patients, of whom 398 died,
and 24,222 sick, Of whom 140 died Of
total of ASH only 53S died. We
should dread TO cite by way of contrast
the corresponding statistics of our hos
pitfalls in former wars.
This memorial volume, from the pens
of several writers, deals with every
essential phase of the hospitals work
excepting the purely technical. 1t tells
of the voyage across, of the organiza-
ton of the great plant at LIE Treport
of the social and spiritual care which
was given to the inmates, and of the
general aspect and activities of daily
life in camp, and of the work at the
front, at Chateau Thierry and the
Marine Above all, happily, it gives
credit to whom credit is due The work
of surgeons, physicians and nurses is
no less essential than that of the SOL
diers in the field, and their names are
no less entitled to publication on q roll
of honor. This volume and the many
others which will appear concerning
other hospital units will form an in
tegral and important part of the his
tory of the Great War, by the side of
the narratives of campaigns and bat
ties on land and sea, no less significant
and interesting than they.