Books and Documents

SPECIAL STUDIES

THE DEMANDS OF
HUMANITY: ARMY MEDICAL
DISASTER RELIEF

by
Gaines M. Foster

CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY
UNITED STATES ARMY
WASHINGTON, D.C., 1983

SPECIAL STUDIES SERIES

David F. Trask, General Editor

Advisory Committee
(As of 1 January 1982)

U.S. Army Center of Military History

Brig. Gen. James L. Collins, Jr., Chief of Military History

Contents

FOREWORD

THE AUTHOR

PREFACE

1. INTRODUCTION

2. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: PRECEDENTS

The Emergence of Federal Disaster Assistance
The Role of the Medical Department

3. EMERGING MISSIONS: COMBATING EPIDEMICS ABROAD

Sanitary and Organizational Reform
Combating Epidemics

4. ESTABLISHING THE MISSION: VOLCANOES, EARTHQUAKES, TORNADOES, AND FLOODS, 1898-1917

Changes in the Domestic Scene and the San Francisco Earthquake
Additional Relief Operations and Formal Recognition of the Mission

5. DISEASE IN THE AFTERMATH OF WAR: DISASTER AID TO POLAND AND RUSSIA AFTER WORLD WAR I

Postwar Relief and America's Sense of Humanitarian Mission
Typhus in Poland
Famine in Russia

6. RELIEF ROLE IN TRANSITION: ASSISTANCE AT HOME AND ABROAD, 1918-1939

Confusion over the Army's Disaster Relief Role
Reevaluation and Relief in the Thirties
Toward New Relief Roles

7. DOMESTIC ASSISTANCE UNDER CIVILIAN COORDINATION, 1945-1976

The Texas City Explosion
Creation of a Federal Relief Bureaucracy
Medical Relief Missions of the Fifties and Sixties
Federal Reorganization and Minor Medical Missions of the Seventies

8. ACTIVISM ABROAD: FOREIGN DISASTER RELIEF, 1945-1976

Relief in the Early Postwar Period
Establishing a Relief System and the Activism of the Early Sixties
Increasing Problems in Foreign Disaster Relief Operations

9. CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE