Military Diseases

MILITARY DISEASES, a term that has now almost completely lost its practical significance. Under military diseases, older authors (Frdhlich) understood 'diseases which usually occur in troops, reduce their combat capability, disrupt military operations or make them impossible.' This included: a) general epidemic diseases, especially during wartime; b) although non-communicable, but mass diseases due to uniform living conditions, insufficiency, irregularity or poor quality of nutrition; c) endemic diseases depending on unfavorable conditions of the location where the unit is quartered; d) diseases that occur more frequently and in larger numbers among troops than among the civilian population and are associated with military-professional activities, such as diseases associated with marching, riding, etc.; and finally, e) combat wounds and concussions. At present, there are no grounds to distinguish the first three groups as military-professional diseases, since the morbidity rate for them in troops with modern organization of supply and military-sanitary service is not higher than among the civilian population and is not determined by the peculiarities of military service as such. Diseases associated with a campaign (foot chafing, overheating, sunstroke, etc.) are not observed exclusively in military personnel and can only be conditionally classified as military-professional. In the conditions of military labor and life, there are specific harmful military-professional features that occur more frequently compared to the civilian population, but the diseases caused by them are essentially the same as in the civilian population, and therefore the term 'military diseases' is already going out of use.