A letter to the Commissioners of Military Enquiry : containing animadversions on some parts of their fifth report ; and an examination of the principles on which the medical department of armies ought to be formed / by Edward Nathaniel Bancroft.

Date:
1808
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to the Commissioners of Military Enquiry : containing animadversions on some parts of their fifth report ; and an examination of the principles on which the medical department of armies ought to be formed / by Edward Nathaniel Bancroft. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    tations aiid to the ignorance of their furgeon’s mates, for thefe feem to have been the only benefits which the “ regimental management’* procured for them, or to the original paucity of the number of their fick and to the acknowledged falubrity of thofe iflands, .1 fhall fubmit to your ferious reflediion. After all the imputations contained in your pages againft the fatality of general hofj)itaIs and the enco- miums therein beftowed on the Panacean “ treatment in regimental ” one might be led to conclude that at the prefent time, when the former no longer exift at home (except at Chelfea and in the Ifle of Wight, which Mr. Knight ftates “ to be reduced as much as poflible,” p. 117 of your Report] and their malign in- fluence has therefore nearly ceafed, and when the mode of condu6ling the latter is in full bloom and activity, and receives daily aid from two of your great authorities, the deficiency of the third being (it is prefumed, adequately) fupplied by the co-ope- ration and fuperintendance of the prefent infpeftor- general of army hofpitals, one might, I fay, conclude that now at laft ficknefs could prevail in but a flight degree among our troops at home, and death could rarely boaft of his triumphs, efpecially as we are in- formed by the infpedfor-general in the profpedtus of his particular duties,” (p. 112 of your Report.) that“/>^ examines the weekly returns made to him by the regi-. mental furgeons, from whence to judge of the propriety of their praBieef and are likewife informed by his afliflant. Dr. Borland, 159 of ditto,) that “ he con- duSls the correfpondence with thofe furgeons upon me- dical praSliceJ'* I fear, however, that if any change has been wrought in the mortality among the army at