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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    various forms of this class of maladies occur. It is for the Medical Officer to discourage alarm in such a case, but with his knowledge of the fact that diseases which thus occur are capable of propagation from each case as from so many centres of infection, it becomes his duty to suggest such precautions as are likely to afford the greatest protection to the body of troops under his care. In these and various other respects it must be apparent to all that the duties which we perform are important as well as special in their nature. They demand not only long training upon our parts, but a certain aptitude, just as much as other specialties require similar qualities on the part of those who would prosecute them with success. Nor is it only to the so-called executive officers of the Medical Department that these remarks apply. ]f the duties of the administrative branches are still less of what belong to the practitioners of medicine in civil life, they are not the less important on that account; no less special. Let me briefly remind you of a few. The principal Medical Officer of a district in England—say that of which Portsmouth is the head-quarters—visits the hospitals of all the corps in garrison once a month and performs twice a year a regular formal inspection of all throughout the district, preparing a report of the manner m which they are severally conducted. He sees m company with the several Eegimental Medical Officers' important cases, and all in which a capital operation is considered to be required-; his sanction bein^, by reou- lation, required before one of a serious nature can'be perlormed, except, of course, in cases of emergency He lias to summarise as well as examine statistical reports on sickness and hygiene, prepared by Regimental Surgeons • an'iv LT. .1 ^''i~y arrangements, that regrments anivmg m the district have suitable requirements for Tor^fabout't -pc.ffiious\stSlS ot corps about to move are properly disposed of - hns tn check he expenditure of what are called extras''i.sucd o see that .sufficient reason is shown by Medfcal Office 1' for any attendants beyond the authorised n X wlZ