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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$[ ^2 ] another, or in no horpital at all. So much for this part of Dr. M‘Gregor’s teftimony ; of the other part, which regards the extent of his opportunities for per- finally “ ohjerving' what he dates to have happened, 1 mud leave him to reconcile fome contradi£lions which leem to me irreconcileable. For he tells us at p. 227 of his Medical Sketches that on the 12th of July 1796, a detachment of the 88th regiment was em- barked at Grenada in the Betfey Tranfport for Eng- land, and that he was one of that detachment.— He adds ‘‘ we embarked 140, and I was mod particu- larly careful not to take any man on board with the flighted appearance of illnefs.*’—He next fays in p. 228, “ we failed from Grenada on the 19th of July,’* &c. and it appears that he afterwards arrived fafely in England. Now as he has tol4 us that the regiment of which he was the furgeon, and the other regiments, continued pretty healthy at Grenadathree months after their arrival there^^ and that he “ embarked for England *’ within little more than half of that time. cannot help feeling a condderable degree of curiofity to know by what fupernatural means he “ hadf (as he dates) “ in the year 1796, an opportunity of ahjerving comparative zdwvir\t2ige of taking care of the fick regi- mental ly mdeael of fending them to general hofpitals.** See Report p. 185. and how he was able to know,/row perfinal obfervationy that, upon “the return of the army to quarters f when he mud have been far on his voy- age to Europe^ “ the fick were ordered to be fent to ge- neral hofpitals, and then the mortality was very con- fiderabie indeed,” id. p. 185. . But you have not relied folely on Dr. M‘Gregors evidence refpefling the mortality occafioned by general lapfpitals in the Wed Indies ; for though your fecond$