JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
Right at the end of WWI there appeared a famous publication on the end results of an epic study on the physical conduction of U.S. men drafted into the armed services:
War Department: Defects Found in Drafted Men; Statistical Information Compiled from the Draft Records...the Physical Condition of the Men registered and Examined in Pursuance of the Requirements of the Selective Service Act, Prepared under the direction of the Surgeon General M.W. Ireland, Major General, MC U.S. Army, by Albert G. Love, MD...and Charles B. Davenport...
This huge (358pp) report was printed by the Government Printing Office in 1920 and provided more data of enlisted men than had ever exited, and for good or for ill (and for the various problems encountered in data collection and interpretation), there was a tremendous stew of bubbling bits of human failure and detractions, real and not.
Full text via National Library of Medicine: https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/bookviewer?PID=nlm:nlmuid-9502639-bk NIH Digital Collections
- "This 1920 study of the men called by the selective service for the U.S. Army upon America’s entry into the Great War was ordered by the War Department, and it employed as its eugenics specialist, Charles Davenport. The study looked at many types of physical, psychological, and mental factors within this part of the male population of the United States."
- "The conclusion of the analysis was than an inordinately high proportion of U.S. Army draftees were defective and below average in physical fitness and psychological or mental readiness. Davenport and his colleagues also concluded that much of the American male population was not equipped for participatory democracy. This test of U.S. soldiers was thoroughly challenged at the time due to suspect analytical methods."--University of Missouri Library https://library.missouri.edu/exhibits/eugenics/defects.htm
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