Just what the future will hold for the Public Health Service in this work, it is now impossible to say. It appears, however, that the Public Health Service for sometime to come will be one of the designated agencies for furnishing hospital care and treatment to beneficiaries of the U. S. Veterans’ Bureau. This responsibility of supplying hospital facilities, with all that is implied, will be as adequately met as possible. The Public Health Service at the present time is operating a number of hospitals which, from many standpoints, are not suitable to the purpose to which they have been put. To attempt to operate hospitals in unsuitable buildings, unsuitably located, subjects the Public Health Service to unmerited criticism, but, since these facilities are needed for a time, it will be necessary to continue such places in operation. It is not possible, under such circumstances, to render the highest type of service, but every effort will be made to render the best service possible.
With the construction which is now going on, under appropriations which have been made available by Congress, it is anticipated that, in the more or less near future, it may be possible for the Public Health Service to close some of its unsuitable plants and open others of a far more satisfactory character. This will relieve the present situation a great deal and will do much to obviate the criticism which has been made against the National Government because it has not supplied suitable hospital facilities for the care of men who have given so much to their country.
In conclusion, it seems appropriate to say that the Public Health Service, in all of this work, has realized fully the necessity for the most complete and cordial cooperation with other governmental agencies engaged in it. It has been a firm policy of the Public Health Service to stimulate an attitude of cooperation on the part of all of its employees. It is a matter of peculiar satisfaction at this time to say that the Public Health Service feels that, in the present Director of the Veterans’ Bureau, it is receiving from him a most cordial support in this policy of cooperation and the relationships which exist between these two Bureaus daily grow better, as they must if the work is to be properly accomplished.
It is also to be noted in this connection that the recent creation of the Federal Board of Hospitalization has added to the administrative machinery a piece of co-operating mechanism, which will, undoubtedly, do much to stabilize and coordinate, as well as standardize, many necessary things, which, up to this time, have been carried on more or less independently. A governing body of this character, which can lay down broad policies, influencing all of the official agencies engaged in this work, must of necessity be in a position to subserve a very useful purpose. The sympathetic consideration and support of this body should have a fine moral effect.”
GENERAL SAWYER: “Representing General Wood we have Colonel Mattison.”
COLONEL MATTISON read the following article prepared by General Wood: relative to the N.H.D.V.S. and its Relation to the World War Veteran:
“Of all the various agencies utilized by the Federal Government in caring for disabled men of the World War, the National Home for D.V.S. is probably the oldest in this line of work, dating back over fifty years in its care for disabled soldiers. Immediately after the close of the Civil War, the necessity for some organization of the government to care for the many thousand disabled soldiers of that war became apparent, and in 1866, by act of Congress, the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers came into existence with a Board of Managers selected by Congress to carry out the purposes of this Act. Prior to this, several of the States, civic and benevolent organizations had taken up the work locally in many parts of the country, but the creation of a National Board superseded the local work and for quite a number of years prior to the time that State homes were established by various States the burden of caring for disabled veterans of the Civil War fell on the National Military Home.
The first Home established was located at Dayton, Ohio and was known as the Central Branch, but as the necessities of the question developed, other branch Homes were established by Congress until at present there are ten different institutions under the control of the Board of Managers, scattered from Maine to California. But as the Civil War was practically a war between sections of the country, all the Homes, with the exception of the one at Johnson City, Tennessee, are located either in the North or on the extreme Northern border of the South. For example the Home at Hampton, Virginia.
Membership in the Home was originally confined to disabled soldiers of the Civil War, but gradually as the need developed, this privilege was extended to soldiers of the Mexican War of 1846, the Indian campaigns, the Spanish American War, and the Philippine service, so that by the year 1917 when the World War occurred, practically all disabled soldiers who had served in any of the wars of the Republic, were eligible to membership in the Home. The high tide of membership in the Home was in 1906 when over twenty one thousand disabled soldiers were members of the various Branches. After the peak of the load had been reached there was quite a decided downward curve in membership owing to the advancing years and heavy death rate among the soldiers of the Civil War, so that by 1917 the membership had decreased to about thirteen thousand men, and there were in the various branch Homes many thousand vacant beds, both in barracks and in hospitals.
In this connection, attention is called to the fact that the Home functioned in a two fold capacity. It furnished hospital service to the man who actually needed such attention and it also furnished domiciliary service to men who were disabled and prevented from taking care of themselves in the active competition of life but who were not actually patients. This latter service is called our domiciliary service and is a service that probably will increase very materially in its scope with the passage of time, as men who have served in the World War, owing to disability will find themselves unable to meet the active competition of the world outside and will therefore need this domiciliary service in a very acute way.