Common accidents and how to treat them / by Andrew Wilson and others.

  • Andrew Wilson
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Common accidents and how to treat them / by Andrew Wilson and others. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    during the Crimean campaign—ready to break down in the field for want of definite forethought in peace. Q. How do you account for this condition of affairs as far as the medical service is concerned ?—A. It is owing to the ignorance of the medical profession in civil life as to what military organiza- tion for war really means, and the absence of any personal know- ledge on the part of the nation as to the horrors of war and the impossibility of improvising everything when war is actually raging. Q. Would it be difficult to place the ambulance and medical service of the volunteers on a really efficient footing?—Nothing could be easier. The Swiss have a medical service as efficient as any in Europe, and it really amounts to a well-thought-out volunteer system. Q. What is needed to be done?—A. Every English county should organize a bearer company, and a field hospital for one hundred beds. This would require about ten surgeons, two quarter- masters, and about one hundred non-commissioned officers and men of a volunteer medical staff corps, drilled, dressed, and dis- ciplined like the Medical Staff Corps of the regular army. These officers and men would receive capitation allowance, like ordinary volunteers, and would go through all the war routine in peace. Q. What further steps would be needed ?—A. All medical students should be asked to go through a course of voluntary ambnlance drill and field hospital instruction, so that when they passed into civil practice they might, if they desired it, be able tc command the volunteer bearer companies and field hospitals in the various lai ge towns and counties. If such a training were given at the medical schools, when war broke out, doubtless a number of young surgeons could also join the army as temporary aid, as volunteers for the war, and would thus gain much useful knowledge, as well as take their share in the national service. In continental countries the conscription and universal military service places at the disposal of the State a large body of medical men, chemists, nurses, etc.; an aid not available in England, but which a goud volunteer system would provide.
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