George Ballingall

“ I have already pointed out the difference between the province of the purveyor and the surgeon; and it is remarkable, that it is precisely at the point where the general and regimental hospitals meet, that the duties of a purveyor become paramount and indispensable, while the duties of a medical officer are in no degree changed, except in so far as he has to treat a disease which, having been acute in a regimental hospital, may probably have become chronic in a general one—a change for which surely every medical man is prepared. ”

“ Nay, such a man will be the very first to listen to any respectful and reasonable suggestion touching the health of his men. If such things as I have cursorily noticed can be done by a regimental medical officer,—who, if he knows his duty, and chooses to do it, may be a very independent man,—if such things can be done by a regimental surgeon, what ought to be the influence of a man of energy, experience, and decision at the head of the department? ”

“ It is not, however, with military men, that the difficulties of the department have heretofore generally arisen, but with the underlings in those numerous collateral offices which have so long been permitted to impair the energies and exhaust the strength of a War Department in this country. A man who will not hesitate to storm a breach, or to head a charge of cavalry, such as that of the light brigade at Balaklava, will think twice before he opposes the opinions, or impedes the operations of an intelligent and experienced surgeon. ”

“ One is entitled to learn wisdom from experience, and I cannot help thinking that, under a recurrence of similar circumstances to those with which the department has had to contend, the services of an assistant-surgeon, or, if you will, an apothecary to the forces, would be well bestowed, in despatching him as a sort of supercargo with every supply of medical stores, seeing them embarked, knowing where they were stowed, and keeping his eye upon them, until delivered to the authority destined to receive them. ”

“ No man is better aware than I am of the evils which have arisen, and must arise, from a limited authority to the medical officers of the British army, but this would seem to have progressively increased since my time, and has now risen to a height which has placed the department not only in a false, but in a helpless and undignified position. ”

“ I wonder what civil element actuated Larrey when he killed the spare horses of the officers to make soup for his men. This you will allow was a most uncivil proceeding; but for this, Napoleon made him, on the instant, a Baron of the Empire. The highest prize in the medical department ought to be accessible to the youngest assistant surgeon who enters the service; and a very paltry prize it is for this great country to hold out to the Chief Medical Officer of its army. ”

“ But is it to be supposed, that men who have, like myself, been accustomed to see their hospitals broken up soon after midnight, to make a march of twelve or fifteen miles, and to have their hospitals again in operation by the time they sat clown to breakfast, and this from day to day for weeks in succession—is it, I say, to be supposed that men conversant with such duties as this, are less competent to the organization of new hospitals than those who have passed perhaps an hour a day in the simple duty of prescription? ”

“ It has risen to a height which calls aloud for a remedy, if the British soldier is hereafter to receive that assistance from the skill of the surgeon to which he has so nobly entitled himself— that assistance which I am sure it is the desire of the nation that he should receive. ”

“ The hospitals, of course, must be just as much under the Inspector-General as the arrangements of the field are under the Commander-in-Chief, and consequently, any peculiarity of success in the recovery of the sick and wounded is as much to the appropriate praise of the former, as the wise array of a battle or a siege is to the distinct honour of the latter. ”

“ The administration of medicine, however necessary it may be to alleviate pain, or to aid in the cure of disease, is but little calculated to ameliorate the air of a crowded hospital, or to promote that cleanliness which, in such circumstances, is, of all medicaments, the most indispensable. ”

“ General the hospital may be, general, as much as you will, in so far as the provisions, the cooking, the washing, the bedding, and the clothing of the sick are concerned, but let us, if possible, have their own surgeons to attend their own men. ”

“ Chisholm, written at the termination of the Peninsular war; after expressing his surprise at the extent and success of the regimental hospitals, Sir James M'Grigor goes on to say,—"However short a time a battalion or a corps rested in one place, a regimental hospital was established. It was frequently established in the face of an enemy, and nearly within reach of his guns. By making every corps constantly keep up an establishment for itself, we could prevent the general hospitals from being crowded. ”

“ Knight, the Inspector-General of hospitals at the time I entered the service, who said to a surgeon, whom he thought a little too fond of drugging, that "he would carry as much physic in his breeches pocket as would serve him and his regiment for six months; and that soldiers wanted nothing but tartar emetic, and a big stick." The value of the tartar emetic 1 am quite ready to admit; and as to the big stick, the cases which suggested its use have greatly diminished since those days. Never was it less necessary than in the army of the Crimea; never was an army imbued with a better spirit ”

“ The civil members of the profession have evinced a most generous spirit in the way in which they have espoused the cause of the assistant-surgeons of the Navy; and I am sure they will sympathize with those men who have been spending toilsome days and sleepless nights under canvas in the Crimea, and are now made the scapegoats for errors committed at home. It grieves me to think that these men should find themselves, at the dose of a campaign, supplanted by others who have not borne the "burden and heat of the day." ”

“ When carrying on war at a distance from our own shores, and in communication with a friendly power, it is not unnatural, nor is it improper, that we should lean upon the products of the country, and no medical man in our service would dream that the means of purchasing these would be either wanting or withheld. ”

“ I have, over and again, been detached from my regiment with parties of sick, and it has happened to me to have served, more than once, in general and garrison hospitals, and to have sometimes had a portion of one of them given up to me for a regimental establishment, according to an arrangement which may, I believe, at this moment, be seen in the King's Infirmary, in the Phœnix Park, at Dublin, or at least was to be seen when I last visited that establishment some few years ago. ”

“ This may be carried to a great extent by classing the patients according to the divisions, brigades, or regiments to which they belong, having the medical staff of those divisions, brigades, or regiments to attend them, assisted by those non-commissioned officers and good conduct men of every regiment who may happen to be patients in the hospital, and who take an interest in their comrades, which strangers cannot be expected to do. ”

“ On another occasion, when the ophthalmia spread far and wide amongst the soldiery in this country, after the return of the army from Egypt, when the civil part of the population became alarmed for their eyesight, and when an enormous burden had been thrown upon the public by the number of men pensioned for blindness, a distinguished oculist from civil life, the late Sir William Adams, was placed at the head of a large and expensive ophthalmic hospital in the Regent's Park ”

“ He was, and still is, at the head of the staff of the First Division, at one time so gallantly commanded by the Duke of Cambridge, who, I observe, has expressed himself fully satisfied with his medical officers.
Amongst other recent communications, I have had a very kind letter from Sir James M'Grigor, thanking me for a letter which I addressed some months ago to the Secretary-at-War, on the Medical Department. He evidently feels and deeply deplores what he calls the "black cloud" which has fallen on the department; expresses a confident expectation that it will right itself ”

“ In Dublin, a class of military surgery has for several years been in operation, and I trust that the gentleman who has so well conducted it will speedily be commissioned by the Crown, and put in possession of an endowment. ”

“ It by no means follows, that because a man is a good surgeon he should be a good commissary also, and it is obvious that whatever tends to withdraw his attention from the study and practice of his professional duties must ultimately prove injurious to the service. ”

“ On occasions of this kind, nothing can be more important than economizing our space, and diminishing the weight and bulk of articles to be carried; and care should be taken that medicines of acknowledged power are not overlaid by those of an indifferent or questionable character, or buried, wholesale, under stores of clothing and ammunition. ”

“ He thinks nothing of going with his pupils to Aberdeen before breakfast, botanising for the day, and returning in the evening. As some indication that the Government has now come to see the propriety of encouraging special courses of instruction tor the rising generation of military and naval surgeons, I may mention that I have lately obtained, through the assistance of our city member Mr. ”