Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/155

 when most needed, they are too often dispersed in search of plunder. They are told to look on the superintending surgeon as their commanding officer, and the regimental surgeon, who ought to have the control over them, with magisterial power to inflict corporal punishment for neglect of duty, finds his authority quite limited.

Several great improvements upon the dooly have at various times been suggested to the authorities by officers of experience, but the old rotten antiquated system is to this day adhered to. When lately at Sebastopol,I could not help admiring the transport system of the French army, and copied from it into the English army, the Cacolet and the Ambulance. The Cacolet is a sort of iron chair, folding up like the step of a coach, with arms, belts, and cushions, either for the sitting or the recumbent posture, one being fixed on each side of a mule, by which a brace of sick men are carried smartly along with ease and comfort to themselves and credit to the transport establishment. The ambulance is a large waggon on springs, and on four wheels drawn by four mules, capable of containing four patients in the recumbent posture in rear, and four or six in the sitting posture in front, with compartments under the front seats for medicine and instruments. The interior is fitted with four portable beds, two above two, that slide into