ow-passenger from Jamaica would readily testify to his being a
gentleman. 'I require no testimony to your being a gentleman,'
returned the kind-hearted colonel. 'Your countenance and address
satisfy me on that head. I will receive you into the regiment with
pleasure; but then I have to inform you, Mr Jackson, that there are
seventeen on the list before you, who are of course entitled to
prior promotion.' The next day, at the instance of Colonel Campbell,
the regimental-surgeon, Dr Stuart, appointed Jackson acting hospital
or surgeon's mate--a rank now happily abolished in the British army;
for those who filled it, whatever might be their competency or
skill, were accounted and treated no better than drudges. Although
discharging the duties that now devolve on the assistant-surgeon,
they were not, like him, commissioned, but only warrant-officers,
and therefore had no title to half-pay.

Dr Stuart, who appears to have been a man superior to vulgar
prejudice, and to have appreciated at once the extent of Jackson's
acquirements and the vigour of his intellect, relinquished to him,
almost without control, the charge of the regimental hospital. Here
it was that this able young officer began to put in practice that
amended system of army medical treatment which since his time, but
in conformity with his teachings, has been so successfully carried
out as to reduce the mortality amongst our soldiery from what it
formerly was--something like 15 per cent.--to what it is now, about
2-1/2 per cent.

In the army hospitals, at the period Jackson commenced a career that
was to eventuate so gloriously, there was no regulated system of
diet, no classification of the sick. What are now well known as
'medical comforts,' were things unheard of; the sick soldier, like
the healthy soldier, had his ration of salt-beef or pork, and his
allowance of rum. The hospital furnished him with no bedding; he
must bring his own blanket. Any place would do for an hospital. That
in which Jackson began his labours had originally been a
commissary's store; but happily its roof was water-tight--an unusual
occurrence--and its site being in close proximity to a wood, our
active surgeon's mate managed, by the aid of a common fatigue party,
to surround the walls with wicker-work platforms, which served the
patients as tolerably comfortable couches. A further and still more
important change he effected related to the article of diet. He
suggested, and the sugg