Dr. Jedediah H. Baxter, Lieutenant-Colonel and Chief Medical-Purveyor, United States Army, was born in Strafford, Orange County, Vt., May 11, 1837. He was graduated at the University of Vermont, both in the academical and medical departments, and in 1860 served as assistant professor of anatomy and surgery in that University. He was house surgeon in “Bellevue Hospital” at the “Seamen’s Retreat,” Staten Island, and on “Blackwell’s Island.”
He entered the Twelfth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers in April, 1861, was commissioned assistant-surgeon of the Regiment, May 13, 1861, and promoted to be surgeon, June 19, 1861. Served as post surgeon at Fort Warren, Boston Harbor, until July 26, 1861, when, with his regiment, he was mustered into the United States service and ordered to join the forces then forming under Gen. N. P. Banks at Sandy Hook, Md., opposite Harper’s Ferry. He was Acting-Brigade-Surgeon, until April 4, 1862, when, promoted to Brigade-Surgeon of Volunteers, he was ordered to report for duty to Gen. Geo. B. McClellan, and served on the staff of that officer during the Peninsular campaign, as Medical Director of Field-Hospitals and the transportation of sick and wounded of the Army of the Potomac.
Disabled from field service by the “peninsular fever,” he was ordered to hospital duty in Washington, D. C., August 1, 1862, and was in charge of Judiciary Square United States General Hospital until September, 1862, when he was ordered to superintend the building of Campbell United States General Hospital, Washington, D. C., of which Hospital, when completed, he was placed in charge, where he remained until January 5, 1864, when he was relieved and ordered to report for special duty to the Provost-Marshal-General of the United States, who assigned him to duty as “Chief Medical Officer of the Provost-Marshal-General’s Bureau.” In this capacity he served, having the management of all medical matters pertaining to the recruitment of the army, until the close of the war, having been Brevetted Lieutenant-Colonel of the United States Volunteers in March, 1865, and Colonel of the United States Volunteers in January, 1866.
When the Provost-Marshal-General’s Bureau was abolished, he was placed on special duty by an Act of Congress, in preparing a report of the medical statistics of the Provost-Marshal-General’s Bureau. On July 20, 1866, he was commissioned Assistant-Medical-Purveyor, United States Army, with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and was Brevetted Colonel “for faithful and meritorious services during the war.” He was promoted to the position of Chief Medical Purveyor of the United States Army, March 12, 1872, in which position he has supervision of the purchase and distribution of all hospital and medical supplies required for the use of the army.
On being called to the charge of the medical branch of the Provost-Marshal-General’s Bureau, Dr. Baxter soon perceived that, in the several Acts of Congress devolving upon the Provost-Marshal-General the duty of recruiting by voluntary enlistment, conscription and substitution, the vast armies called out to suppress the rebellion, lay the means of obtaining such a view of the physical state and military capacity of the nation as had never before and might never again be obtained. After an examination of such material as had already accumulated under the limited operation of the draft and recruiting Acts, he prepared and issued to the surgeons of the enrolling boards, in the several congressional districts, blank forms and instructions designed to afford the means of tabulating from the reports of individual examinations of recruits, drafted men and substitutes, the statistics illustrating the relations between disease and nativity, residence, age, complexion, height, and size, social condition and occupation in the sex on which the principal physical burdens of life fall.
The accumulating records of the medical department of the army could be utilized for the benefit of military surgery and hygiene by showing the varying facts of disease and wounds among soldiers, and the records of pension applications and the regularly recurring examinations of invalid pensioners would give the results of non-fatal wounds and disease upon the disabled soldier returned to civil life. But Dr. Baxter saw that a separate and important field of study and action was left to his own bureau, if its current records could be reduced to a system of fulness, accuracy and uniformity. This was successfully done, and the results will soon be before the public. From advance sheets of the volume, many interesting facts have been drawn for this article. The work is based on the reports made of the medical inspection of about 605,000 persons subject to draft, and minuter descriptions of the fuller examination of 508,735 recruits, substitutes and drafted men.
Of the whole number examined, a little over 257 in each thousand were found unfit for military service. The largest number found disqualified through any specific class of diseases were those affected by diseases of the digestive organs, the ratio of unfitness to the whole number examined being a little more than sixty in a thousand. Fifty nativities are embraced in the report, the ratio of unfitness in each thousand being, for American whites, 323; American colored, 225; Canadians, 258; Irish, 337; Germans, 400; Scandinavians, 294; English, 325; and Scotch, 308.
From these ratios it will be seen that the Negroes, Canadians and Scandinavians were the healthiest, and the Germans and Irish the unhealthiest. The relative position assigned to the negro by these figures is not in accord with the general opinion upon the subject, but the healthiness of unskilled occupations and his simple method of life in the South accounts for the fact. The report also shows that a larger proportion of civilians are fit for military duty in this country than in Great Britain or France, and probably Germany, though the figures to prove the proposition in the latter case are not at hand.
Of the recruits, conscripts and substitutes under twenty years of age, the ratio of rejection and exemption was 268 in the thousand, including those too young for service; between twenty and twenty-five years, the ratio was 245; between twenty-five and thirty, the ratio was 330; it was 411 between thirty and thirty-five; between thirty-five and forty it was 462, and over forty years it was 607 in a thousand, including all rejected for dotage.
This table bears out the common experience that infirmities grow with age. Of the native whites, 663 in a thousand were of light complexion; of Canadians, 661 in a thousand; of English, 705; of Irish, 702; and of German, 694—indicating, by the lower ratio of fair complexion, a greater admixture of races in this country than in the parent countries. Of persons of light complexion, 385 in the thousand were unfit for service, while the dark complexions show the healthier ratio of 332 in each thousand. The average height of Americans is found to be 5 feet 7½ inches, of Canadians 5.5, 5.1, of Irish and Germans 5.5, 5.4, of Scandinavians and English 5.6, 0, and of French one-fifth of an inch lower than the last named. All under five feet were rejected or exempted, as the case might be; and the rejections under 5 feet 1 inch were 582 in the thousand, between 5.1 and 5.3 they were 443, between 5.3 and 5.5 they were 322, between 5.5 and 5.7 they were 303, between 5.7 and 5.9 they were 313, between 5.9 and 5.11 they were 326, between 5.11 and 6.1 they were 350, and they were 358 in all over 6 feet 1 inch. The healthiest persons were those of the average height of 5 feet 7 inches.