equent representations to government on the defective
medical arrangements in the military service--representations the
very receipt of which were not acknowledged by Mr Pitt, to whom they
were forwarded. The Peninsular war commencing, Dr Jackson was again
named Inspector of Hospitals, but was not, thanks to the persevering
enmity of the Medical Board, sent on foreign service, although he
volunteered to sink his rank, and go in any capacity. The Board even
succeeded, by calumnious statements that he had purchased his
diploma--statements he readily confuted--in preventing his
appointment to the Spanish liberating army; although the British
government had formally requested him to accept such an appointment,
and agreed to give credentials testifying to his capacity and
trustworthiness. This last disappointment led him, in an unguarded
moment--peppery to the last--to inflict a slight personal
chastisement on the surgeon-general, for which he was imprisoned six
months in the King's Bench.

But the triumph of his enemies was not of long duration. In 1810 the
Board was dissolved, and the control of the medical department
vested in a director-general, with three principal inspectors
subordinate to him. Then did Jackson return to active service, and
from 1811 to 1815 was employed in the West Indies; his reports from
whence embracing every topic relating to medical topography, to
sanitary arrangements, and to the observed phenomena of tropical
disease, are it is not too much to say, invaluable. His hints as to
the choice of sites for barracks, the propriety of giving to
soldiers healthy employment and recreation, as a means of averting
sickness, his suggestions as to the treatment of fevers and other
endemic diseases, may be found in the various works he has
published, embodying the fruits of his West Indian experience.

In 1819, he was sent by government to Spain, where the yellow-fever
had broken out, and his report upon its characteristics has been
universally admitted to supply the fullest information on the
subject that had hitherto been communicated to the public. He
availed himself of his presence in that part of Europe to pay a
visit to Constantinople and the Levant; and, retaining his energy to
the last, when a British force was sent to Portugal in 1827, he
desired permission to accompany it. The sands of his life, however,
were then fast running out, and on the 6th of April in the same year
he died, after a short il