Title: War Surgery and Medicine

Author: Stout, T. Duncan M.

Publication details: Historical Publications Branch, 1954, Wellington

Part of: The Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939–1945

This text is the subject of: ‘Something of Them Is Here Recorded’: Official History in New Zealand

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Medical Boards

During the North African campaign 306 men, excluding battle casualties, were graded down in the ophthalmic department at Helwan, and it can be said that about 200 of these were regraded for conditions present at enlistment. It is worth while summarising the reasons for so many time-consuming medical boards.

	To NZ	To Base	Total
Chronic or recurring superficial infections, including keratitis	41	9	50
Hysteria-
(1) Without ocular pathology	14	1
(2) With old pathological complications	18	7
(3) With amblyopia ex anopsia	9	1	50
Uveitis	30	14	44
Amblyopia ex anopsia	2	39	41
Errors of refraction	15	12	27
Old perforation of the globe	12	7	19
Accidental injury	10	5	15
Cataract	11	3	14
Vitreous opacities	10	4	14
Miscellaneous pathology	10	3	13
Nystagmus	6	1	7
Detachment of retina	6		6
Retrobulbar affections	4	2	6
	——	——	——
	198	108	306

It has been noted that conditions in North Africa were trying for men with visual defects and led to a high attendance rate at the ophthalmic department. Yet, in spite of this and of the somewhat haphazard testing in New Zealand, the analysis of medical boards at Helwan discloses that only 27 men were regraded for errors of refraction and none for errors of muscle balance. Nothing occurred to suggest that by the use of various refinements in testing a more efficient army could have been selected.

As time went on there was a tendency to elaborate the visual testing of recruits, due possibly to some dissatisfaction with the results obtained up to 1943. But the early defects were not so much due to weaknesses in the prescribed standards as to excessive decentralisation of the work, and it is probable that the grading of men from a purely medical point of view showed at least an equivalent margin of error. The problem was one of administration, not of visual standards or clinical competence.