A letter to the Commissioners of Military Enquiry, containing a refutation of some statements made by Mr. Keate, Surgeon General to the Forces, respecting the Medical Department of the Army / [Robert Jackson].

  • Jackson, Robert, 1750-1827.
Date:
1808
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to the Commissioners of Military Enquiry, containing a refutation of some statements made by Mr. Keate, Surgeon General to the Forces, respecting the Medical Department of the Army / [Robert Jackson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    3/66
    LETTER, &c. Gentlemen, THE observations of Mr. Keate, sur^ geon general to the forces, directed against your fifth report, call upon me to appear again in the irksome field of controversy. The surgeon general, like Dr. Bancroft, supposes that you have been biassed in your opinions con¬ cerning the affairs of the medical department of the army by statements which you found in my publications of 1803 and 1805 ; and, as he pretends that-these are not correct, I hold it to be a duty which I owe to you as persons appointed to investigate a subject of important national concern, and to ascertain the truth of the fact in all its relations, to furnish illustration on those points which may be deemed obscure, or not sufficiently ex¬ plained in the works alluded to. As I had formed views of army medical arrangement different from those of the members of the army medical board, I explained my views to the public on that subject in obedience to my duty. The surgeon general, judg¬ ing others by himself, ascribes my act to personal resent¬ ment ; alledging it must be so, because he and the phy¬ sician general opposed my appointment to the hospital staff, and because they afterwards effected my removal from the office of physician at the army depot. Mr. b Keate