Page:Introductory lecture delivered to the class of military surgery in the University of Edinburgh, May 1, 1855 (IA b21916469).pdf/39

38 ; and it is remarkable, that it is precisely at the point where the general and regimental hospitals meet, that the duties of a purveyor become paramount and indispensable, while the duties of a medical officer are in no degree changed, except in so far as he has to treat a disease which, having been acute in a regimental hospital, may probably have become chronic in a general one—a change for which surely every medical man is prepared. The purveying of a regimental hospital is for the most part a simple affair, and conducted successfully by the hospital sergeant, under the direction of the surgeon; but when serving in a general hospital, within the reach of daily or hourly communication with a purveyor, the surgeon is happily relieved of this.

So much are my old-fashioned notions in favour of the regimental principle, that I cannot help thinking it might with great advantage have been extended farther in the recent operations in the Crimea. Had the large addition, so strenuously recommended by Mr. Guthrie, been made to the regimental, instead of the general medical staff, I see nothing to have prevented the assistant-surgeons of regiments from having been detached in succession with the sick and wounded, just as the numbers of these increased,