Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
Death from lobar pneumonia, bronchopneumonia andmeasles, fatal with few exceptions in consequence of complicatingpneumonia, constituted in 1916 approximately one-sixth(16.8 per cent) of the mortality in the army,[1] whereasin 1917 the same diseases were responsible for nearly two-thirds(61.7 per cent) of all deaths. During the first halfof 1918 the incidence of pneumonia steadily increased andin some army camps there were extensive outbreaks of unusuallysevere pneumonia.
In July, 1918, the Surgeon General assigned a group ofmedical officers to the study of the pneumonias prevalentin the army and stationed them at Camp Funston, Kansas.At the base hospital of this camp all cases of pneumonia occurringamong troops assembled in the camp were studied,but during the month of August there were few cases ofpneumonia and these were of mild type.
Pneumonia which occurred at Camp Funston during Augustwas almost wholly limited to recently recruited coloredtroops from southern states (Louisiana, Mississippi).There was a low rate of mortality, and few complications.This pneumonia exhibited a noteworthy difference in etiologyfrom that usually seen in civil life, for it was associatedwith a high incidence of those types of pneumococci whichoccur in the mouths of healthy men, namely, Pneumococcusatypical II,[2] Type III, and the group of microorganismsrepresented by Type IV. Pneumococcus Type I was encounteredin only a few instances and Type II was not found,although these two microorganisms are responsible fortwo-thirds of the lobar pneumonia which occurs in civillife.
12During the investigation at Ca