1904-1905 (Russo-Japanese War)

“Improving greatly upon the American and German models, the Japanese were the first to introduce a thoroughly modern military medical system that integrated all the major elements of casualty care and disease prevention into a complete command structure. The Japanese Army was the first to require a medical plan as part of the combat operations order, the first to place the chief of medical services in the general staff structure, the first to provide full rank and status to medical corps officers in combat theaters of operations, and the first to create an effective, independent medical supply service with its own transport. . . . Its emphasis on disease and infection prevention by applying the lessons of bacteriology, vaccination, and antiseptic surgery resulted in an army losing fewer casualties to disease and infection than to enemy weaponry for the first time in 200 years . . . a level of manpower conservation that remained unsurpassed until the Vietnam war. . . . the Russian Army established the modern foundations of military psychiatry both organizationally and clinically. . . The principles of proximity, immediacy, and expectancy (PIE) . . . still undergird all methods of battlefield treatment of psychiatric casualties (Gabriel, 215).