Remarks on schools of instruction for military and naval surgeons, in a letter to the Right Hon. Sir Robert Peel, bart. / by Sir George Ballingall.

Date:
[1843?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on schools of instruction for military and naval surgeons, in a letter to the Right Hon. Sir Robert Peel, bart. / by Sir George Ballingall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    quently, 1 am arrived at a time of life when my exertions are ill able to keep pace with my wishes. Ihere is one other source of information for the Medical Officers of the Army and Navy, to which I would briefly al- lude, and with which you, Sir, as a Member of Parliament, must necessarily be acquainted, I mean the “ Statistical Re- ports on the Sickness, Mortality, and Invaliding among the Troops,” and the “ Statistical Reports on the Health of the Navy.” These have been prepared at an enormous amount of labour to the authorities at the Horse Guards, the Medical Board, and the Admiralty, and at a very considerable pecu- niary expense to the public. All this labour, all this expense will, I confidently assert, be in a great measure lost to the service, unless means are taken to concentrate the valuable information embodied in these reports, to put it in an attrac- tive and impressive form, and to keep it constantly before the present and the rising generation of Army and Navy Sur- geons. Having now, I believe, noticed all the sources of infor- mation specially adapted to the Medical Officers of the Pub- lic Service, I would observe, that the first, the General Hos- pitals, are in a great measure unavailable to a numerous and important body, the Medical Officers returning from foreign stations; the second, the Lectures delivered in this University, are only accessible to a very limited number, and this hither- to by favour of the Professor, not as a matter of right; and that the third, the Statistical Reports, are in their present shape too voluminous to be consulted with facility, or to be carried about with convenience. What then is the remedy I would propose ? Simply the endowment of a Professorship of
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