But a few years ago the matter of maintaining the personnel of the Medical Corps of the Army at the authorized quota was a subject of grave concern to the Surgeon-General's office. Numerically, the corps, as authorized by Congress, only distantly approached the real needs of the service, and the slow influx of young men was such that the vacancies annually occurring were by no means filled by the applicants accepted at the annual examinations. For instance in the year 1907 there were sixty-four applicants, of whom ten were accepted for the Army Medical School in October, and subsequently commissioned as first lieutenants in June, 1908. The vacancies occurring from October, 1906, to October, 1907, totaled eleven. It is thus seen that the vacancies naturally occurring exceeded the new admissions to the corps during that year. In May, 1908, an examination of fifty-eight candidates gave nine qualified men. In August,