In connection with the Navy uniform study made by the Navy Uniform Board it may be interesting to note what steps along that line were taken many years ago.
It was in 1808 that a surgeon of the United States Navy first made known his observations on the subject. He said that “a seaman should have very little in his power with respect to his own dress.” He implied that the clothing then worn was nondescript, and complained that it was a very common thing to see men with light linen trousers on in cold weather, and thick woolen ones in summer. To avoid this he advocated that “a uniform should be established for summer and winter.” Then he started to design a uniform.
He suggested that a thick cotton cloth, with blue or red stripes, or plain white, should be made up. If made of white cotton, the jacket and vest might be bound with blue tape, and the buttons made of horn or leather, varnished, and impressed with a device, “an eagle and anchor for example, which would give a neatness and uniformity to a ship’s crew.” Doubtless, this was the seed which germinated into the bone buttons, with anchor, worn on Navy uniforms today.
It was this staff officer who expressed his wish to have seamen dressed up, for he also suggested a white shirt over their flannel, and a black neckcloth. Was this the forerunner of the neckerchief? He advocated “a small round hat, varnished to make it waterproof, with the name of the ship to which the sailor belongs printed on the front, or the letters N.U.S. (Navy of the United States) on a band, which may be shifted when a man is turned over to another ship.” There is little doubt but this suggestion resulted, finally, in the blue, round, flat hat, with black ribbon band and gold letters, in use today. However, his N.U.S. was not adopted, and U.S.N. was ultimately used in its stead. Thus we see, from the literature of a century and a half ago, where several present-day articles of uniform were conceived.
This surgeon also then advised that each man should have a “pea jacket” to wear when on watch at night. “With such ideas put into practice,” he said, “the crews of the different ships would be known by the hat bands, which would excite a spirit of ambition to appear clean and orderly.” How true it was!
“Good shoes and stockings and socks should be furnished by pursers,” he recommended, “and the men should be compelled to wear them, and never suffered to go barefooted.”
“Join the Navy and See the World” was recruiting propaganda in those days, as is evidenced by his observations on discipline. He advocated frequent musters to prevent lazy habits, and believed that discipline ought to be more particularly attended to on board ship, “because many landsmen, unaccustomed to sea life, cannot be immediately reconciled to its duties, and they become dejected, especially if they are disappointed in their expectations.” He pointed out that many men entered the naval service—-to use his own words—to “see the world,” without having any idea of their situations on board, and they, therefore, became low spirited and neglected themselves.
He encouraged men to exercise in dancing and fencing. Every ship should be provided with one or two violins, because there would be no difficulty in procuring a “fiddler,” especially among the colored men. In support of his contention he pointed out that “it was a very common practice with Commodore Barry, when the men broke off from their work in the afternoon, to order the boatswain’s mate to pipe all hands to dance or mischief!”
The necessity for a code of regulations on discipline was stressed by him, since each commander then issued his own regulations respecting the internal discipline of the ship. He recommended “a general code,” so that men would not then be at a loss to know the discipline of a ship when transferred from one vessel to another.
This medical officer also had far-sighted ideas on other subjects, for he then advocated having all letters on public business sent through the mails free of postage.
He also recommended that the Government have a “national depot of medicines, instruments, etc.,” as a more economical plan than procuring supplies from drug stores; and a chemical laboratory therein for the manufacture of chemical preparations “effecting a saving up to 300 per cent.”
He was an early advocate of a dispensary on wheels, with a store chest and small medicine chest. One of the assistants on the wagon “might have a small case, not larger than a common cartouch box and of that form, in which several small vials might be carried, containing such articles as necessity may require to be administered for the relief of the sick, or injured soldiers, when in the line of march, without having recourse to the medicine chest; such as laudanum . . . adhesive plaster, lint, armed needles, and a tenaculum. They may also have a few rollers and two or three tourniquets . . . The car- touch box may be buckled in front ... or suspended over the shoulder; the former being the most convenient manner of carrying it.” This was apparently the forerunner of the modern first-aid kit.
Promotion of medical officers by selection also had his attention, for he advocated that surgeons’ journals be occasionally submitted to higher authority to afford an opportunity to discern their merits and to enable such authority to promote when vacancies occur.
In France it had been ordained about 1747 that all discoveries in medicine, which the practice of French hospitals might furnish, should be immediately published, which gave origin to the Journal de Medicine Mililaire. This surgeon of our Navy advocated such a plan as worthy of imitation by the American Army, which doubtless resulted in the foundation of the world-famed library of the Surgeon General of the Army.
In the operation of hospitals he had an eye upon the use of Marines as guards. “A guard should be allowed each military hospital; to a naval hospital a porter, unless there be Marines in the vicinity to furnish a guard. They should prevent all patients from going out without a written or printed ticket signed by the surgeon; they should prevent spiritous liquors from being taken into the house, and all improper communication with the inhabitants in the neighborhood of the hospital.”
He barely missed announcing a germ theory about 75 years before Pasteur when he said: “I have long supposed that the production of an hyperoxygenated atmosphere, in wards where typhus gravior prevails, would be attended with beneficial consequences, under an idea that there is a deficiency of oxygene (sic) in these apartments; but late eudiometrical experiments prove that there is very little or no change in the component parts of the air in the wards of hospitals, therefore it must be the exhalations or excretions of the sick that we are to consider as the vehicles of contagion; these impregnate the atmosphere with a noxious matter, which has not been discovered by chemical tests by those who are fully competent to the task.”
The foregoing are but some of the observations made by Surgeon Edward Cutbush, of the United States Navy, in 1808!