A letter to the Commissioners of Military Enquiry, containing a refutation of some statements made by Mr. Keate, Surgeon General to the Forces, respecting the Medical Department of the Army / [Robert Jackson].

  • Jackson, Robert, 1750-1827.
Date:
1808
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to the Commissioners of Military Enquiry, containing a refutation of some statements made by Mr. Keate, Surgeon General to the Forces, respecting the Medical Department of the Army / [Robert Jackson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    / Keate says this was done in obedience to duty; the rno^ tive, which acted on the physician general and surgeon general on this occasion, I may however say with safety, was different from a sense of public duty: the purpose was a purpose of revenge, and it was accomplished in an insidious manner, unknown, at least never practised by military men. The calumny was dark and mean; and I Motive for writ- confess that I felt so much resentment at the falsehoods, which were industriously propagated through the means of these chiefs of the medical department, that I was in¬ duced to vindicate my professional character, through the medium of the press, from the injurious aspersions which had been cast upon it in the year 1801* This I had aright to do; and I did it openly and fully, and so demonstratively, that my statements have never been refuted, though they bore hard on the professional and moral character of Sir Lucas Pepys and Mr. Keate. I had dedicated the best part of my life to military service, and I believed that I had made some useful ob¬ servation on the treatment of military sick. This was my opinion, and I did not consider myself interdicted by the law s of the country, from communicating my informations concerning the principles to be kept in view in digesting a system of medical arrangement for the benefit of the British army, though these might not accord with the views of the physician general and surgeon general of the forces. Instead of resentment, there was here a mani¬ festation of good design; and that you may see, and that the physician general and surgeon general may see through you, that I was moved to this undertaking by no un¬ worthy motive, I beg leave to inform you that the base of my opinions, on the subject of medical arrangement for armies, was laid on the experience which I gained in the American war. It was there acquired, and it was actually