Medical Research in the Navy

Medical research in our increasingly important Navy is a major component of the over-all activities of the Department of Defense in research in general and medical research in particular. Maintenance of the health of personnel in peace and war has broad implications as to coordination of the man and the weapons systems, fitness for operations in a wide variety of environments, prevention of disease and injury, diagnosis, and therapy. In some ways this parallels civilian medicine and is accordingly valuable to medical practice as a whole, but many requirements of the military are peculiar to the Armed Forces and need special approaches. However, civilian medicine and military medicine are and should be complementary. The Navy is especially concerned because of its medical support of operations on the sea, under the sea, and in the air, as well as the requirements of Marines on land. The center of the medical effort