Page:Early History of Medicine in Philadelphia - George W Norris.djvu/73

 appointed to prepare it. Upon its organization by Dr. Church, the first Director-General, disputes arose between him and a number of regimental surgeons concerning their duties; the latter claiming the right of having hospitals allowed them, of retaining the sick of their respective battalions under their own care, and of drawing what stores they thought proper from the General Hospital; while the Director, agreeably to the designs of Congress, required them to send the sick to the General Hospital, where they could be well accommodated and provided for, and declined furnishing anything except medicines and instruments to the battalions.

The misunderstandings and disputes thus arising in Dr. Church's time were carried so far as to give rise to courts of inquiry, and regimental hospitals were broken up wherever their surgeons attempted to open them. These difficulties between the two classes of medical officers were aggravated by some of the officers of the army, who, ignorant as they were of the nature and purposes of the General Hospital, justified the regimental surgeons in their attempts to establish themselves in their claims. The abuses practised by these latter in their exorbitant drafts from, and demands upon the