A letter to the Commissioners of Military Enquiry : containing animadversions on some parts of their fifth report ; and an examination of the principles on which the medical department of armies ought to be formed / by Edward Nathaniel Bancroft.
- Date:
- 1808
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A letter to the Commissioners of Military Enquiry : containing animadversions on some parts of their fifth report ; and an examination of the principles on which the medical department of armies ought to be formed / by Edward Nathaniel Bancroft. 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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![« C « ] of every thing peculiar to military hofpitals, with greater facility than hofpital mates. Even Dr. ]ack- fon has admitted (1803, P* 33) acquiring a knowledge of the military difcipline, &c, of thefe hof- pitals, the profeflional ftudies” of a medical man give him great advantages over other men ; for he has been led in his refearches, to trace to their principles^ the powers of a6tion in man, both in body and mind, fo that he acquires a facility of arranging corre6Hy and fyftematically materials which appear, in their exter- nal circumftances, to be heterogeneous and difcord- ant/' Another of Dr. Jackfon’s pretences is, that there is no difference “ between the military phyfician and the military furgeon(1805, p. 29) that “ the medical art is a whole^ conne6fed intimately, in all its parts.’* And that “ the divifion of its parts marrs the progrefs of the art, as a fcience.’* (1805, P* 9-1-)* affertion which is left not only without any fupport from him, but which is obvioully contradiSled by reafon, by ex- perience and by analogy, in every other art or fcience ; it is even contradicled by what he had previoufly ftated ‘in his work of 1803, p. 29, where he fays that “ in civil life a divifion or participation of labour, among phyficians, furgeons, and apothecaries, is found to be ufeful.” He might alfo have fiated, becaufe it is well known, that in confideration of the limited powers of the human mind, it has been found advantageous to fubdivide thefe divi/ionSy and encourage fome men to devote their attention and faculties almoft exclufively to the difeafes of the eyes, other men to thofe of the ears, &c. and others again to thepradlicc of midwifery. The more ancient Egyptians are faid to have had par- ticular phyficians for each feparate difeafe; and it is](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21928526_0014.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
