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APPARATUS FOR THE MANUFACTURE OF LIPOVACCINES

AS USED IN THE ARMY MEDICAL SCHOOL IN THE PREPARATION OF

Typhoid-Paratyphoid (A and B) and Pneumococcus (Types I, II and III)
And for experimental work on the Lipovaccines Meningococcus (Normal and Para),
Dysentery (Shiga, Flexner and Y), Cholera and Plague

See Whitmore, Fennel and Petersen, "An Experimental Investigation of Lipovaccines," "The Journal of the American Medical Association, February 16, 1918, Vol. 70, pp. 427-431, Whitmore and Fennel, March 30, 1918, Vol. 70, pp. 902-904, and Whitmore, "Lipovaccines with Special Reference to Public Health Work," read at the December, 1914, meeting of the American Public Health Association.

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SCIENTIFIC PERSONNEL WORK IN THE ARMY1

THE sciences dealing with human nature were brought to bear upon the problems forced upon America by the world war. Anthropology and psychology, economics and statistics, history, sociology and education, were put in service to improve our use of manpower, just as the physical and biological sciences were put in service to increase, economize and mobilize the nation's physical re

sources.

Consider a few illustrations. At one of the cantonments, within a few months' time, over 30,000 men were given a uniform standard intelligence-test and, as a dircet result of it, 600 men who would have been a detriment and even a positive danger to their fellow soldiers were sent away before time and money were wasted on their military education.

Certain very important institutions were receiving candidates a large percentage of whom were discarded, with little but discouragement and envy to show in return for the expense of their time and the government's money. Yet these candidates were chosen by a system which already represented the acme of common sense administered by extremely able A scientific study of some five hundred cases showed where much of the trouble lay and provided a remedy.

men.

Under the pressure of the war the regular army scheme for measuring the qualifications and efficiency of its officers could not be operated. Nor would it have been suitable for the two hundred thousand officers taken from civil life with only a few months of military training. A workable record and rating plan was prepared by an expert in applied psychol

1 Address of the vice-president and chairman of Section H, Anthropology and Psychology, Baltimore, December, 1918.

ogy, tested carefully in certain camps, and put into force throughout the army.

At one of the largest naval radio schools the candidates were admitted in part through a series of tests devised for the purpose by one man of science, and their instruction was directed by methods devised by another.

In one of the large munition factories, a number of psychologists were kept constantly at work studying the means of selecting the right individuals as employees and finding the optimum conditions for their work.

Multiply such cases as these many many times; add to them the scientific personnel work done by physiologists and medical men; add further that done by the many modern business men whose work is so based on principles and verified by experiment that we should gladly claim them as fellow scientists -and the total would probably be the greatest increase in scientific control over the management of men ever made in any year in any country.

Until the war-history of the scientific activities of the National Research Council, the various emergency boards and bureaus, and the military organizations themselves is written, nobody will be able to describe or assess this work as a whole or the particular share of it due to applied psychology. I regret also that circumstances have prevented me from speaking, as I had hoped to do, from even a partial study of the records and reports available in manuscript in Washington and elsewhere. can speak only in a very informal way in reminiscence of the activities seen, or shared, during these eighteen months.

Scientific personnel work has followed two main lines which we may call mass work and analytic work. These of course shade into each other and almost always cooperate, but the distinction will be helpful, at least for presentation.

MASS WORK

As a result of the prompt, energetic and patient labors of Yerkes and his associates of the psychology committee of the National Research Council, and of the subcommittee

of the American Psychological Association, about seventeen hundred thousand soldiers were given a standard examination for intelligence, so devised that a small organization of examiners and clerical helpers could test and report on five hundred or more individuals a day. Within a day or two after a train-load of recruits reached a camp, it was possible for the camp psychologist to give substantial aid in such matters as:

1. The discovery of men whose superior intelligence suggests their consideration for advancement, for example, to posts as non-commissioned officers.

2. The discovery of men whose low grade of intelligence renders them either a burden or a menace to the service.

3. The selection and assignment to Development Battalions of men who are so inferior mentally, that they are suited only for special work.

4. The prevention of undesirable differences of mental strength between different regiments or companies.

5. The early recognition of the mentally slow as contrasted with the stubborn or disobedient.2

The history of this work in its early stages has been related by Yerkes, and its later development will doubtless be made public. Amongst the many important contributions to knowledge of the significance of such a test, I quote one from the preliminary report recently issued.

The median scores for recruits from different civil occupations are in summarized form as follows:

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This table shows conclusively that in the sort of ability measured by the test (1) skilled mechanics and tradesmen, men who work with tools, are in general very closely alike and very low-near the level of the unskilled laborer; (2) clerical workers are in general very highnear the level of professional men. Either the clerical worker is a man of much greater general intelligence than the blacksmith, carpenter, locomotive engineer, machinist, tool maker, gunsmith or assembler; or the ability measured by the test is very much specialized; or both of these statements are true in a more moderate form. The matter is one of great importance. In proportion as it is true that the more intelligent men seek clerical work rather than work in skilled trades, an essentially invidious class distinction will tend

to have a real basis in fact; and the management of business concerns will tend to fall into the hands of men trained in the office and salesroom rather than in the shop. In proportion as this representative of our standard tests of intelligence is specialized, overweighting ability to think with words and symbols in comparison with ability to think with materials and mechanisms, our whole procedure in measuring intelligence requires a critical review; and probably the common view of intelligence requires reconstruction.

No less significant is the variability within each occupational group. Taking the measurements as they stand, the 75 percentile unskilled laborer is up to the level of the median general mechanic, tool-room expert, or automobile mechanic, and up to the level of the 25 percentile mechanical engineer. The 75 percentile railroad clerk is at the level of the average accountant or civil engineer. The 75 percentile receiving or shipping cleark is at the level of the 25 percentile physician. This variability would be reduced by longer and repeated tests, but, unless the test as given has a very large probable error, it would still be enormous. It would still imply that there were in the occupations supposed to demand a high minimum standard of intelligence, a very large number of dull men; and in the occupations supposed to give little opportunity for the use of intellect, a very large number of gifted men and consequently a large unused surplus of intellect. Further information concerning the exact nature of the abilities of which the test is symptomatic is evidently important here.

As one considers the use of intelligence tests in the army, the question at once arises, "If for the sake of war we can measure roughly the intelligence of a third of a million soldiers a month, and find it profitable to do so, can we not each year measure the intelligence of every child coming ten years of age, and will not that be still more profitable?" A more extended test such as will place an individual on the scale for intellect for his age with an average error of not over 0.2 the mean square deviation for his age, would

doubtless be desirable. A more varied test which will prophesy ability to work with things and human beings as well as ideas and symbols would doubtless be desirable. Series of tests that could be made public without serious injury from deliberate preparation by tutors would also be desirable, and probably necessary. However, even with these more rigorous requirements, the expense for an annual nation-wide inventory of the intelligence of the ten-year-old cross section would not equal the cost of the war to America alone for five hours..

The results of such a census of intellect, especially if repeated at 14, 18, 22, would give superintendents of schools, commissioners of charity, mayors of cities and governors of states facts which they really need every day in their business.

A second main line of scientific work for large groups of soldiers was carried on by the Committee on Classification of Personnel in the Army under the leadership of Walter Dill Scott.

As a result of work done by him for the army in the first months of the war there was constituted in August of 1917 a Civilian Committee of seven psychologists and three experts in the selection of men for employment. This committee worked first under the jurisdiction of the Adjutant General and later under the General Staff. This committee urged, and was soon entrusted with, the work of planning and carrying out an inventory of the man power of the National Army and establishing Personnel units in each of the sixteen cantonments. By these means each man's special abilities could be considered so that the right man would be put in the right place. These personnel units were found to be of direct practical service, were soon established in the National Guard as well as in the National Army, and were later extended to the Staff Corps and to the Students' Army Training Corps. Schools were established to train officers in the committee's system of inter3 Just before the close of the war, the members of the committee and the group of associates whom they had organized were being commissioned.

viewing recruits, recording their abilities and training, and using these facts in placing and transferring men.

A modern army is specialized into over two hundred occupations each as essential in its way to success in war as is the combat work of infantrymen, machine gunners or signallers. An army fights with a force of specialists ranging from artists to automatic-screw operator, bacteriologist to butcher, cargador to cupola tender, detective to dog trainer. The Committee on Classification of Personnel had to fill such orders for man power as:

One hundred and five artists, scene painters, architects, etc., for camouflage work for the Engineer Corps.

Three thousand typists, needed at once.

Forty-five enlisted men capable of leadership who are competent in the distribution and handling of oils and gasolines, fit to receive commissions in the Quartermaster Corps.

Professors of mathematics equipped to teach in the Field Artillery schools.

Meteorologists and physicists able to learn quickly to make meteorological observations and predictions.

Six hundred chauffeurs who speak French.
Electric crane operators.

In August, 1918, nearly four hundred such requisitions calling for over two hundred thousand men were filled. They had to be filled promptly in almost every case, and each had to be filled so as to leave the best possible material to fill every other requisition.

From one point of view this work was simply that of an enormous and glorified employment agency; and the scientists and business men engaged in it would be content if they had done nothing more than conduct an efficient agency for supplying to the army the skill it needed, when and where it needed it. From another point of view the work was a continuous study of human nature and application of scientific management.

In connection with the inventory of each man's abilities, tests to measure proficiency in each of about a hundred trades were devised, in the eight months from March, 1918. By the end of October these tests were in regular

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