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other means of curing patients, while fulfilling their own peculiar
service to society through new generations.

What are the functions of General Hospitals, besides curing the sick and
wounded? some readers may ask, who have never particularly attended to
the subject.

The first business of such institutions is undoubtedly to restore as
many as possible of the sufferers brought into them: and this includes
the duty of bringing in the patients in the most favorable way,
receiving them in an orderly and quiet manner, doctoring, nursing,
feeding, clothing, and cleaning them, keeping their minds composed and
cheerful, and their manners creditable, promoting their convalescence,
and dismissing them in a state of comfort as to equipment. This is the
first duty, in its many subdivisions. The next is to obviate, as far as
possible, future disease in any army. The third grows out of this. It is
to improve the science of the existing generation by a full use of the
peculiar opportunities of observation afforded by the crop of sickness
and wounds yielded by an army in action. To take these in their reverse
order.

There must be much to learn from any great assemblage of sickness, under
circumstances which can be fully ascertained, even at home,--and much
more in a foreign climate. The medical body of every nation has very
imperfect knowledge of classes and modifications of diseases; so that
one of the strongest desires of the most learned physicians is for
an improved classification and constantly improving nomenclature of
diseases; and hospital-records afford the most direct way to this
knowledge. Thus, while the phenomena are frittered away among
Regimental or unorganized General Hospitals, a well-kept record in each
well-organized hospital will do more than all other means to promote the
scientific understanding of disease.

The statistics of disease in armies, the ascertainment of the numbers
who sicken and who die of particular diseases, would save more lives
in future generations than can be now appreciated; but what can the
regimental surgeon do towards furnishing any trustworthy materials to
such an inquiry? A dozen doctors, with each his smattering of patients,
can learn and teach but little while they work apart: whereas a regular
system of inquiry and record, in action where the sick are brought in in
battalions, is the best possible agency. Not only are these objects lost
when surgeons are allowed to make the