Measles Outbreak Increased Death Rate Among Soldiers in Training from 2 to 5 Per Thousand, 1918

From Trench and Camp, printed weekly for the Y.M.C.A. by courtesy of the Charlotte Observer for Camp Greene, Charlotte, N.C., February 4, 1918. Camp editor H.M. Thurston; Associate editors F.M. Burnett, D.M. Spence, J.H. Strawbridge, C.H. Ellinwood, C.E. Winchell.

So much has been written and said about the death rate among soldiers in training in the United States that a little exact and authentic information might not be amiss at this juncture.

War Department records show that from the middle of September to the last of December the death rate among the soldiers in camps and cantonments was 7.5 per thousand. In other words, out of every 2,000 men, 15 died, while 1,985 lived. The death rate of 7.5 per thousand is less than the rate would have been if all the men in the camps had remained at home in civilian clothes.

The death rate per thousand among United States soldiers in 1898 was 20.14, or nearly three times as great.

In 1916 the death rate in the Army was 5 per thousand.

But for the outbreak of measles and its complications in the camps and cantonments, the death rate from September to December would have been only 2 per thousand.