officers preferred the plan to any other.  One plea was, that the medical officers and the patients were acquainted with and attached to each other:  and this was very true.  Another consideration was, that each surgeon liked to have his field of duty to himself, and found it an advantage 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 a general kitchen, a general laundry, a dispensary and surgery, and a staff of officials, each with his own distinct business, instead of as many jacks-of-all-trades, each doing a little of everything.  Yet the obstinacy of the fight made by the surgeons for the system of Regimental Hospitals was almost insuperable.  There was no desire on any hand to abolish their hospitals, which must always be needed for slight, and also for immediately pressing cases.  What was asked of them was to give way when epidemics, or a sudden influx of wounded, or protracted cases put a greater strain upon the system than it would bear.