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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$t ] ' to the do6lnnes of the different fchools, and thereby vitroduce variety, even contradiclion in the management of the concerns of the fick,” and to p. 130, where he fays that “ fever under one form or other is the mofl common difeaje in armies, and it is the difeafe in the treatinent of which men’s opinions are the leaft agreed,”' A dozen other alfertions of fimiJar import may be eafily found, but in truth it requires only a very flight excrcife* of common fenfe to perceive that no fuch conftant uniformity of pradfice can exifl: in armies any more than in civil life ; and that, in both, the methods of treating the lick will be as various, as the degrees of intelledf, fcience, and experience among medical men; unlefs indeed, the authority of certain perfons may lately have introduced among regimental hofpitals fome mechanical unprincipled routine, for which, certainly, army phyficians can never be wanted, and in which it may be hoped and expedied that they will never par- ticipate. Whatever attention may be paid to other parts of your Report by the legiflature and government of our country ; they will not, I prefume, without full enquiry andconfideration,refolve to adopt ar\innovation,oi which even Robefpierre and his adherents were afraid. And, probably, in making fuch an enquiry, they may think it expedient to afcertain more accurately than you ap- pear to have done, the true extent of the qualifications and defedls of thofe gentlemen, who are recommended by you, as fit to fuperfede the army phyficians, and in doing this, they may probably recolledt that the exa- minations at the college of furgeons, on which you place fo much reliance, have no relation to the praSlice cfphyjtc; being wholly and exclufively confined to furgery. And in regard even to this lingle divijion of$