The return of two million men from Europe after residing there for several months, to scatter throughout the United States, raises some public health questions of profound interest. Do these men represent any new element of danger to their country in respect to epidemic disease? The final answer to this question must be left to the settlement of time; but the importance of the subject demands that some attention be given it now.
The possibility that the returning troops will bring and spread infection lies largely in the fact that the soldiers have been living abroad in a foreign environment, mixing intimately with associates from various countries and places and in many ways not improbably exposed to infectious diseases.
Against some of the most common of these diseases they have been protected by vaccination, and against others by sanitary safeguards equally appropriate. But experience shows that the barriers raised against