A system of arrangement and discipline, for the medical department of armies / by Robert Jackson, M.D.

  • Jackson, Robert, 1750-1827.
Date:
1805
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A system of arrangement and discipline, for the medical department of armies / by Robert Jackson, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    lightened of the ancient nations. The Greeks and Romans, the, most warlike and renowned people of former times, appear to have been deficient in medical and surgical provisions for the use of their troops. Surgeons, who were military captains, accompanied the heroes of Greece to the siege of Troy. Physicians, as a separate class, were not present in that expedition. In the emerging and semi-barbarous stages of society, where the sphere of natural knowledge is limited and the views are frequently incorrect, the occurrence of disease is usually considered as the infliction of punishment for offences committed against Heaven: in such case, the intercession of the priest is deemed a more powerful remedy than the skill of the phy- sician. The reign of superstition, which is only banished from the world by the reign of philoso- phy or true religion, obtained in the earlier periods of society; its predominance maybe supposed rea- sonably enough to aid in accounting for the neg- lect of the technical part of the medical art in civil society, consequently, for the slower introduc- tion of rational medicine into the fabric of the military system. But, though the influence of superstition was probably a cause of the slow progress of this bene- ficial art in civil and military life, it may be pre- sumed that there were other causes which kept the profession in the back ground, as relative to