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

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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$fuaded, and without any fufpicion of their being fuch. One of thefe (manifeltiy derived from Dr. Jackfon’s mifinformation) may be found in feveral parts of your report, where the appointment of regular phyficians from civil life is reprefented by you as an innovathn ^ e, g. at page i6, in which you ftate “ that in the medical fervice of the ordnance there arc no phyficians 5 and in the royal navy the phyficians hold the highefl: rank, and are appointed from the furgeons in thofe fervices ; and this” (you add) “ was the pra61ice alfo, as we un- derftand, in the army medical department, previous to the formation of the hoard in \']()'^\* and this mifrepre- fentation is not merely ftated in your report, but you have incautioufly advanced it, when you were interro- gating perfons under oath, and thus (without any improper intention I believe) encouraged them to fuppofe that the regimental furgeons had been aggrie- ved, by this fuppofed novel praftice, of taking army phyficians from civil life, inftead of promoting regi- mental furgeons to that office—one inftance of this will be fufficient, and it occurs in your fecond examination of Dr. Borland (p. 160), where your 4th quefiion is ftated in thefe words, viz. did it appear to you, that the regimental furgeons, who had been appointed before the creation of the medical hoard in 1793, ufedto fucceed to the medicalJiaff appointments in the army^ were unequal to the cure ot the fick of the army Dr. Borland’s anfwer to this queftion will be noticed in another place. The queftion itfelf is here ftated only to (how the error which accompanied your interroga- tories, and w'hich was by'them probably communicated to fome of the witnefles. It remains, however, for me to convince you of this error, and I (hall have no dif-$