Military Uniforms: The Virtues of Humility

Dig the stripes on the pants

 Whenever the Chief of Medicine walked on the ward, a junior medical resident ran ahead of him and told all the interns, residents and medical students to pull on their white jackets. Ordinarily, these jackets were left hanging about on the backs of chairs or thrown on counter tops. In those days only surgeons wore scrubs; at The New York Hospital, housestaff (interns and residents) in the Department of Medicine wore white tunics with a blue New York Hospital patch on the left shoulder and white pants with the same patch near the beltline. After twenty hours on call, most of the tunics and pants were stained with blood, urine, vomit, stool and presumably, the sight of troops on the line looking disheveled  and stained would be offensive to the delicate sensitivities of the Chairman of the Department of Medicine.  
We didn't much care what the Chairman thought. He didn't know any of our names. He was not a clinician. He had worked in laboratories most of his career, was British and he did not make rounds with the interns and residents the way the chairmen of Neurology, Gynecology or Surgery did. What would he have had to say about a patient who presented with a fever or pulmonary edema?  He appeared on the ward rarely, and usually because some distinguished, that is, wealthy person had been admitted. 
Looking at the get ups of the current chiefs of staff of the Army, Air Force and Navy, The Phantom wonders what all those gizmos are supposed to say about the guy wearing them. 
Consider Ulysses S. Grant, commander in chief of the greatest American army in our greatest war, a war in which more Americans were killed than all other wars in our history combined.  Pretty simple uniform. 
Grant had once, as a young lieutenant ridden into town in a fancy uniform and was ridiculed by a stable boy for putting on airs. Grant never dressed up much after that experience, preferring a private's blouse to wear around camp. He didn't need a lot of shiny hardware to command respect. 
One wonders what the current get ups say about the compensatory psychology of our current commanders. If they need all those merit badges, do they really command respect?

Look Ma! I'm an Eagle Scout.

wT