THE MEDICAL SERVICE OF. THE ARMY.
[To TEE EDITOR OP TEE "SPECTAT011.1 do not suppose that you will be disposed to open your columns to a discussion of the interminable question of how to provide an efficient Medical Service for the Army, but you may perhaps allow me, as a civilian who has had to give a good deal of attention to the subject, to make one remark. It seems to me that underlying much that has been written, including the Report of Mr. Brodrick's Committee, and all that has been done, including the scheme of that Committee, there is a fundamental misconception of what the Medical Service of the Army is for. The Army consists for the most part of young men selected as free from physical defect and in good health. The main duty of a Medical Service is to keep these men in good health,—that is to say, the chief skin of its officers should be in preventive medicine. The officers of the corps are compared with surgeons and physicians to urban hospitals, and, of course, suffer by the comparison. The real analogy is with the Medical Officers of Health. This also contains the answer to the difficulty raised in your article on " Combatant Non-Combatants" in the Spectator of January 4th.--I am, Sir, &c.,
DAWSON WILLIAMS.
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