Remarks on army surgeons and their works / by Charles Alexander Gordon.

  • Charles Alexander Gordon
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on army surgeons and their works / by Charles Alexander Gordon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    It becomes our duty to weed the regiments under our . respective charges of those men whose ailments or acci- dents are of such a nature as to be apparently not amen- able to treatment ; and here our duties are not only special in their nature, but altogether different from the • Medical man's in civil life. He treats his patients each with reference only to himself. We treat the soldier not so much in reference to himself as with regard to the efficiency of the general body of which he is an atom; and inasmuch as the choice of an attendant does not rest ^ with him, so, instead of his discharging his Medical man when no longer needed, the Medical Officer discharges him, perhaps very much against his will. Thus it may, on the one hand, be necessary for the efficiency of a regiment that certain men be compulsorily sent to hos- pital ; so again it may be equally necessary that instead of retainina; men in the wards for lonoj and uncertain periods, or of performing surgical operations which, how- ever they might redound to the credit of the operator, would not be the means of restoring their subjects to the ranks, the regiment shall not be em^umbered with the names of soldiers who are to all intents incapacitated for military duty. This explains how it happens that . men discharged from the Service are at times operated upon in civil hospitals, and thereby rendered capable of earning a livelihood in civil life. The two conditions, be . it observed, are in no way similar. Turn we now to active Military service, and let us enumerate a few of the duties of our Department. It is to the Medical Officers that the general in command must look for an approximate estimate of the ordinary casual- tics by sickness, death, and invaliding, which, with refer- ence to climate and general conditions, he may lay to his account, and desire reinforcements from the mother country to fill the vacancies thus to be created. To therii he has tb refer for approximately near views of the quan- tity and nature of conveyance, accommodation, servants, medicnies, and appliances for hospital purposes which should attend an army; and to them he must refer in regard to the mode of travel] ing best suited to non- etlectivcs whcnljcmg finally disposed as invalids. I have