The United States Sanitary Commission.

Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The United States Sanitary Commission. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    mer of 1862, it was manifestly impossible for the Sanitary Commission to do otherwise than enlarge, rather than re- trench, its operations. To cease or diminish its humane min- istrations would have been both cruel and criminal. Its work went on ; every loyal home at the North demanded it; the Surgeon-General and all faithful and hard-worked army sur- geons desired it to go on. The fact that its methods and measures had been studiously adapted to render such supple- mentary aid as it offered in an acceptable and most effectual manner, was appreciated by every general in command, and every right-minded medical director in the field. The Preventive and inspectorial department of the Commis- sion's work necessarily became completely interwoven with that of the Relief department during the campaigns of 1862. Relief became an agency of greatest sanative power and im- portance, and the supplies which the people furnished through the Commission's channels, or that were purchased with money by wholesale, became, by a most natural metonymy, sanitary stores. During that period, as soon as the medical corps and sanitary inspectors, under the new Medical Act, had commenced service, the Commission's inspectors devoted themselves more particularly to the systematic and proper application of these sanitary stores, and to such duties of a general nature as would leave the work of systematic inspec- tion of camps and hospitals wholly to the new corps of regularly commissioned inspectors. But, as we have already mentioned, the Commission's work of systematic inspection of hospitals was resumed under new auspices during the succeeding autumn, and at the same time the field work of inspection assumed unprecedented importance as a crusade against the scurvy that was threatening all our armies. Thus, by force of circumstances, as well as by predetermined purpose, the strictly hygienic branch of service never had opportunity to degenerate into inefficient routine, but has been continued as a truly sanative, scientific, and practical department of army service. Recently the Commission has enlarged and more thoroughly systematized this Preventive department, and, in view of the sad embarrassments that now afflict the medical bureau, it