William Henry Welch was the most distinguished pathologist, physician, and scientist in the United States in the early years of the twentieth century. He was, at one time or another, president of the American Medical Association and of the Association of American Physicians, and his reknown among medical scientists was equaled by his fame among all scientists, which won him the presidencies of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Science, and the Board of Directors of the Rockefeller Institute. Doyen of all the American sciences, his like in that respect had not been seen since Benjamin Franklin.

Despite the urgency of existing obligations, Dr. Welch left his post at Johns Hopkins to answer President Wilson's call to fight “the war to end all wars” and, along with millions of men a half and a third his age, put on the olive drab of the United States Army. In 1918 his job was trouble-shooting for the Army Surgeon General, traveling about the nation inspecting the sanitary conditions in the camps so abruptly gouged out of America's open spaces to provide its plowboys and jitney drivers with places to learn the skills of trench warfare. The job wasn't glorious, but it was a very important one because in all previous wars more American soldiers had died of disease than in combat, and history would surely repeat itself unless constant and careful inspections of the camps were made.