Page:Introductory lecture delivered to the class of military surgery in the University of Edinburgh, May 1, 1855 (IA b21916469).pdf/30

29 The highest prize in the medical department ought to be accessible to the youngest assistant surgeon who enters the service; and a very paltry prize it is for this great country to hold out to the Chief Medical Officer of its army.

The experiment of introducing the "civil element" into the medical department of our army, has heretofore been eminently unfortunate. Let us revert for a moment to the calamities of Walcheren. There was at that time a respectable old gentleman from civil life at the head of the department, the late Sir Lucas Pepys, who had, I believe, been a successful apothecary, or general practitioner at Weymouth, and had made himself acceptable to George III., when resident there. When called upon to proceed to Walcheren to give his assistance to the sick, he declined to move, sat still in Berkeley Street, and declared in an official communication, that he could be of no use, and that he knew nothing of camp and contagious diseases but what he had learned from Sir John Pringle's book. To this, it was said by Gobbet, a great political writer of the day, with all the bitter irony of which he was so great a master, that the old gentleman had only one additional