antage to have a large variety of ailments to treat, to the constant
improvement of his experience. They said that doctors and patients and
nurses all liked the Regimental Hospital best, and this was clear proof
that it was the best. They could at that time say also, that every
soldier and every doctor had a horror of General Hospitals, where the
mortality was so excessive during the Peninsular War that being carried
to the General Hospital was considered the same thing as being sentenced
to death.

Such being the state of opinion and feeling in the profession, it
naturally happened that British army-surgeons stuck to their Regimental
Hospitals as long as they could, and, when compelled to cooperate in a
General Hospital, made the institution as like as possible to a group
of Regimental Hospitals,--resisting all effective organization, and
baffling all the aims of the larger institution.

In busy times, no two Regimental Hospitals were alike in their
management, because the scheme was not capable of expansion. The surgeon
and his hospital-sergeant managed everything. The surgeon saw and
treated the cases, and made out his lists of articles wanted. It was his
proper business to keep the books,--to record the admissions, and make
the returns, and keep the accounts, and post up all the documents: but
professional men do not like this sort of work, when they want to be
treating disease; and the books were too often turned over to the
hospital-sergeant. His indispensable business was to superintend the
wards, and the attendance on the patients, the giving them their
medicines, etc., which most of us would think enough for one man: but he
had besides to keep up the military discipline in the establishment,--to
prepare the materials for the surgeon's duty at the desk,--to take
charge of all the orders for the diet of all the patients, and see them
fulfilled,--to keep the record of all the provisions ordered and used
in every department,--and to take charge of the washing, the hospital
stores, the furniture, the surgery, and the dispensary. In short, the
hospital-sergeant had to be at once ward-master, steward, dispenser,
sergeant, clerk, and purveyor; and, as no man can be a six-sided
official, more or fewer of his duties were deputed to the orderly, or to
anybody within call.

Nobody could dispute the superior economy and comfort of having a
concentration of patients arranged in the wards according to their
ailments, with