In 1915 the French government’s desire to increase the size of the army and war economy led to the grave suspicion that many of the sick or injured, treated in the healthcare service units, were shirking their military duty by refusing treatment or operations intended to hasten their return to the army. This idea was reinforced by the discovery of cases involving self-inflicted injuries and self-poisoning, and this suspicion of military unworthiness has led some doctors to commit abuses in order to unmask the “malingerers”, and has at the same time provoked different attitudes among the sick and injured, ranging from submission to insubordination, and from malingering to resorting to various other schemes. But it has also raised in many quarters (Undersecretary of State for the Health Service and advisory bodies, medical, experts and learned societies, committees and Chamber of Deputies), “arrangements”, which allowed not only politically embarrassing manhunts of the malingerers or endless convictions to be avoided, but also allowed a balance to be maintained between the rights of the injured and the interests of the nation at war.