Page:Introductory lecture delivered to the class of military surgery in the University of Edinburgh, May 1, 1855 (IA b21916469).pdf/38

37 on every extended scale of warfare, and I believe they never can be more advantageously conducted than by assimilating them as far as possible to our regimental establishments. General the hospital may be, general, as much as you will, in so far as the provisions, the cooking, the washing, the bedding, and the clothing of the sick are concerned, but let us, if possible, have their own surgeons to attend their own men. This may be carried to a great extent by classing the patients according to the divisions, brigades, or regiments to which they belong, having the medical staff of those divisions, brigades, or regiments to attend them, assisted by those non-commissioned officers and good conduct men of every regiment who may happen to be patients in the hospital, and who take an interest in their comrades, which strangers cannot be expected to do. This is a classification, as regards military hospitals, of equal, if not greater importance than some of those usually adopted on purely professional grounds; and the general hospital, whether under one or more roofs, thus becomes, as it were, a congeries of regimental hospitals.

I have already pointed out the difference between the province of the purveyor and the sur-