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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![[ ] not at the expence of the phyficians, who are equally entitled to be rewarded alfo. If furgeons are to be encouraged and remunerated by promot- ing them to offices, for which, in feveral intlances at leaft, they have been notorioufly unfit,^' why fliould they not alfo be made field officers, and the captains of companies excluded from all farther pro- motion ?—the injury in this cafe would be no great- er than that which is done to the phyficians under the prefent fyftem. Indeed the injuftice and mifehief which attend this fpecies of promotion have been felt and avowed even by Dr. Jackfon. For though he appears as you properlyf obferve to have fuggefted to Mr. Knight the greater part of thofe opinions refpeft- ing general and regimental hofpitals upon which the latter has been afling for fome time pafi, the exclufion of phyficians from the offices of infpec^lor and deputy infpedlor, is an extreme meafure which Dr. Jackfon himfelf, with all his partialities, cannot help blaming. He wrote indeed under the bias of two errors ; one of them was a belief that the appointment of army phyfi- cians from civil life at the commencement of the laft war was a novel pra6lice, and a grievance to< the * The phyfician general being afked refpedling the confe- quences of a dlvifion of the patronage of the Army medical Board byvvhich the nominationof infpe^forial officers had fal- len to Mr. Knight,anfwered on oath that it had been attended tvith difadvantages; for (adds he) “ tlie confeqiience has been thatperfons of inferior medical education have been appointed to fituations fuperfeding the authority ot the phyficians ; I allude to the authority of the deputy infpedors, ” Kept, p. 99. •f See p. ?3. of Report.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21928526_0101.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
