w
to himself as to the quality, quantity, and times of his doses, with the
mortality in the wards apparently about the same.

Post-mortem examinations often revealed chronic diseases whose existence
could not have been suspected during life, and yet had made death
inevitable.

Another advantage in army hospital practice was the stability of the
position and the absence of the harassing anxiety of friends, thus
affording the highest possibilities of the judgment and reason. And
still another advantage was the high social relations existing between
the medical officers, due to the absence of all causes for jealousy,
neither the position nor salary depending on superior endowments or
professional success.

I was aware that, in spite of my lack of experience and the presence of
a most painful sense of general insufficiency, my sick and wounded were
about as safe in my hands from professional harm, even from the first,
as the patients of the most experienced medical officer in the hospital.

With high professional ideals, with no ability to make use of hazy
conceptions or ideas, having no pride in knowledge that had not become
my own, I began at once to reinforce myself from the experience and
wisdom of my brother officers, whose advisory services were always
readily and kindly rendered.

From the first and all through my military service my severely sick had
the advantage of all the borrowed skill and experience I could command.
As for surgical operations, they were all performed in the presence of
most of the medical staff, some of whom were of great experience.

The surgery of the army hospitals of 1864 was of the highest character
in skill and in careful attention to all the details involved, and the
fatalities were generally due to the gravity of the wounds requiring
operations and lack of constitutional power for recovery, rather than to
the absence of the germ-killer. At that time the microbe was not a
factor in the probabilities of life or death. In all else the care of
the wounds could hardly be surpassed.

As for the medicinal treatment of my sick, it was unsatisfactory from
first to last. After all the years since I cannot believe that, except
for the relief of pain, any patient was made better by my dosage; and in
all fatalities the post-mortem revealed the fact that the wisest dosage
would have been without avail.

But in the study of the history of disease as revealed by symptoms my
hospital experienc