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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    actually put before the public in the year 1791, in the ap¬ pendix to my Treatise on the Fevers of Jamaica, published in that year. At this period no medical board existed, and I had no knowledge of either Sir Lucas Pepys, or Mr. Keate; hence my resentment could not be then said to operate against them and their arrangements. But besides my work of 179L 1° which I refer, you will here find some documents subjoined in an appendix,* which may serve to prove that I have always thought in one manner respecting the medical department of armies, that 1 have taken the liberty occasionally of recommending the sub¬ ject to those who, in my opinion, were likely to attend to it, and that, where I myself had authority to act, I never failed to execute the arrangements which I had projected. In my publication of 1805, in which I consi¬ dered the medical department of armies on general grounds, I avoided, as much as possible, all such matters as did not essentially concern the subject, or as were not, in my opinion, * intimately connected with the interests of the British nation; and it may be inferred, from the proposition which I made to the late prime minister Mr. Pitt, that I had no desire to expose publickly the errors of the existing medical system, which I was willing to consider as having proceeded from want of knowledge, rather than from negligence or party views in those who gave it form. I intimated to Mr. Pitt in the year 1804, as appears from the preface to my w^ork, that I had formed a system of medical arrangement for the British army, that I was ready to submit it to his consideration in the view that he might order it to be examined by persons who were competent to judge of its merits, adding that, if found to be what I affirmed it was, effect might be / * Appendix, No. II, IIL B 2 given