The nearer the
hospital is to the active force, the better, of course; but there are
conditions to be fulfilled first. It must be safe from the enemy. It
must be placed in a permanent station. It must be on a good road, and
within immediate reach of markets. It ought also to be on the way home,
for the sake of the incurable or the incapacitated who must be sent
home.
In the Regimental Hospital, the surgeon may be seen going from the man
who has lost a finger to a fever patient,--and then to one who has
ophthalmia,--passing on to a fellow raving in delirium tremens,--next to
whom is a sufferer under bronchitis, who will not be allowed to go out
of doors for weeks to come; and if half a dozen are brought in with
cholera in the course of the day, the officials do not know which way to
turn. It is possible that the surgeon may be found making starch over
the kitchen fire, because there is nobody at hand who understands how to
make starched bandages; or he may be at the desk, casting up columns of
figures, or writing returns, when he is urgently wanted at the bedside.
Such things can hardly happen now; but they have happened within ten
years.
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