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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!['llland alone fwhich an ar?ny phyfuian is not permitted to make inquiries into] are delerving of your attention. I'he fourth objection urged againft the general hofpitals on the continent is, “ that many foldiers, who had been fent into them with flight ailments, caught fevers there and perilhed.’^ The truth of this melancholy fa61 1 (liall not difpute; but the fame has often happened in regimental hofpitals, and if the faft iifelf have any w^eight as an argument, that weight is perhaps in favour of general hofpitals, becaufe, by receiving all the cafes of contagious difeafe, they fave great numbers alte6fed with flighter ailments in the former from the danger of infe6tion to which they muft otherwife be expofed. The exiftence of conta- gious diforders, however, is not neceffarily connected with any hofpitals, but is an accidental calamity to which all are obnoxious, and which it is, or fhould be, the duty of the chief medical officer to obviate. It is, therefore, not a fit ground of comparifon between the advantages of regimental and thofe of general hof- pitals. * The next allegation againft general hofpitals to be noticed is, that foldiers tarried very long in them, and the worft charafters in the zrmy^malingerers*y found their way into them, and frequently impofed upon medU * The term of ** malingering” is thus defined in page 31 of the Report, viz. “ that fraudulent difpofition which is fometimes found in foldiers, of procuring themfelves to be placed on the fick-lift, and of continuing on it longer than is recetTary.*’](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21928526_0056.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
