War of the Rebellion: Serial 012 Page 0195 Chapter XXIII. GENERAL REPORTS.
Potomac he will require at least three clerks, one of whom should be a competent hospital steward. This assistance is necessary for recording correspondence, making the reports required at headquarters. An assistant quartermaster and an assistant commissary of subsistence are absolutely necessary to the chief surgeon. These officers, holding official relations to their respective departments, can so much more readily command and furnish the supplies in possession for what he wants upon a quartermaster or commissary already overwhelmed with business. I am surprised it had never been thought of until I brought it to the notice of the present Surgeon-General while we were at Yorktown. If I had had these officers on the Peninsula I could have fitted up and supplied our hospital ships and stationary hospitals with comparatively little trouble or delay. I could have kept the ambulance trains more in hand, could have known more about them, and could have taken much better care of them. The advantages of such an arrangement are too obvious to require to be urged upon a military man.
For each corps d'armee of which an army is composed a chief surgeon should be placed upon the staff of the commander of the corps. He should have an assistant and a clerk. If the corps is more than 25,000 strong, he should have tow assistants. He should have also an acting assistant quartermaster and commissary. This officer will take charge of the ambulance and supply train, and when temporary hospital arrangements are to be made for the corps he will provide the tents and buildings, and will see to the drawing and placing in position of the necessary subsistence. While we were on the Peninsula I knew in two instances the valuable time of a medical officer wasted in the effort to get from commissaries subsistence for which his patients were suffering, and for which he had an order from headquarters. This officer would take charge of the hospital train upon a march, see that the wagons were not misapplied, distribute them to the brigades and regiments upon their arrival in camp, muster, pay, and subsist the teamsters, forage the horses, &amp;c.
The guard for the hospital train would be the Ambulance Corps if a regular ambulance corps is authorized, or the drilled hospital attendants if we are compelled to use them upon the plan adopted in Washington. In the latter case we might by this means hope to keep these men together. They could not very well be removed and their places supplied by uninstructed men or not at all, at the caprice of colonels.
The chief surgeon of the army should have on his staff one experienced medical officer of the army for each corps d'armee, to be kept constantly employed in sanitary inspections. It is in the field we want these officers, and where, in my view, their duties are all-important. No medical man of less than ten years' military training is, in my opinion, competent to perform these duties in the field. Any intelligent physician can inspect the police of a city hospital. One inspector cannot do justice to more than 25,000 men. This I know from experience.
The chief surgeon of the army, the chief surgeon of the corps, and the inspectors should constitute a council of health, and should assemble weekly if practicable, examine the medical reports, the reports of the inspectors, &c., deliberate upon all matters pertaining to the health of the army, and submit through the chief surgeon to the commanding general the result of their deliberations.