The medical
field-case No. 1 weighs about sixty pounds filled, and field-case No.
2 weighs about forty pounds. These two cases contain all the medicines
necessary to run a division hospital; the case of emergency
instruments does not weigh above ten or twelve pounds, and would not
be a burden for a child to carry. It is therefore difficult for the
small-minded officer of the line to see why the Medical Department was
unable to have these medicines up at the front. They had the same
means of locomotion provided for the other soldiers, by Nature, and
they had, moreover, no particular necessity for all rushing to the
extreme front. On the contrary, they had from the 23d of June, when
the landing began, at Baiquiri, until the 1st of July, to accomplish a
distance of less than twenty miles; and it would seem reasonable that
they might have had their medicine-cases up where they were needed by
that time.
These gentlemen pose as the most learned, expert, scientific, highly
trained body of medical men in the world. They are undoubtedly as well
trained, as highly educated, and as thoroughly proficient as the
medical officers of any army in the world. A summons of an ordinary
practitioner would bring with him his saddle-bags of medicines; no
physician in the city would pretend to answer even an ambulance call
without having a few simple remedies--in other words, an emergency
case; but it was an exception, and a very rare exception at that, to
find a medical officer who took the trouble to carry anything upon his
aristocratic back on that march to the front.
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