RT Journal
A1 Baron SH, Williamson EM, Stuart FA, Blackford SD
T1 ARmed forces' need for physicians
JF Journal of the American Medical Association
JO Journal of the American Medical Association
YR 1949
FD June 18
VO 140
IS 7
SP 644
OP 644
DO 10.1001/jama.1949.02900420064017
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.1949.02900420064017
AB To the Editor:— 
    Until recently we, the undersigned civilian doctors, had our doubts about the need of the Army for additional Medical Corps officers at the present time. We wondered whether perhaps the Army had not overestimated its needs as a peacetime organization and set its quota on the basis of wartime conditions. We felt that the pre—World War II idea of more than six medical officers to one thousand troop personnel was absurd overstaffing for actual medical needs of a peacetime army—even as an occupation force. We had heard that there were nearly four doctors per thousand soldiers in the European Command, and to us this seemed an excessive number for healthy men when some parts of the United States had less than one doctor per thousand population. Indeed we hardly saw the need for former A.S.T.P. students or other doctors to volunteer now for military service.Within the