As troops would be led into disease ridden areas, typhoid, malaria, yellow fever, and dysentery struck thousands of troops. Maj. Walter Reed had his greatest assignment to head the Cuban yellow-fever commission. William Gorgas, who used Reed's research on malaria, made the building of the Panama Canal possible. .
The 20th Century also brought new technologies to the practice of medicine. .
Women now could enlist in A Nurse Corps. Whereas, during the Civil and Spanish-American War, women were simply civilians under contract, they now had the right to be called soldiers. In 1911 with the rise and demand for dentistry, Congress created an official Dental Corps. Concepts of water purification through chlorination began in 1910 with Maj. Carl Darnall, who devised a way to chlorinate drinking water, and were applied to field uses by Maj. William Lyster, who invented the "Lyster bag".
New technology created between the 2 world wars created opportunities for growth in the Corps function. In 1920, the first Medical Field Service School opened at Carlisle Barracks, Penn., to train medical officers and enlisted medics in field medicine. Dr. Hiram Orr created a closed-cast treatment for compound fractures in the 20's. In the 1930's studies covered everything from effect of marijuana use on soldiers to drugs like Atabrine and quinine, as well as how to effectively store, transport, and collect blood and human plasma.
During World War II and Korea medicine, along with other technology, continued to grow. Drugs such as penicillin were created, Typhus vaccines were restored, psychiatric problems such as "Shell Shock" and "battle fatigue" were studied, and antibiotics were mass distributed for the first times. The Nurse Corps grew to 57,000 during the war, and as a result Congress granted women temporary commissions as officers. Col. Florence A. Blanchfield became the first woman to hold a permanent Army commission.
