PRINGLE. 175 this nobleman. Through the interest of his new- patron he was appointed physician to the military hospital in Flanders ; and it was provided in his commission that he should receive a salary of twenty shillings a day, and be entitled to half-pay for life. The attention which he paid to his duty as an army physician does not require to be en- larged upon. His Treatise on the Diseases of the Army, which was first printed in 1752, is an ample proof of his zeal and industry in the branch of duty to which he had been so unexpectedly sum- moned, and testified that his previous pursuits had only rendered him more ready for any new depart- ment of his profession. One most humane mea- sure, and hitherto unpractised in warfare, appears to have sprung principally from his suggestion. It had been previously customary to remove the sick for the purpose of security, when the enemy was near, to a considerable distance from the camp, — and many were, consequently, lost before they could be placed under the care of medical officers. Lord Stair, sensible of this evil, proposed to the Duke de Noailles, when the army was en- camped at Aschaffenburg, in 1743, that the hospi- tals, on both sides, should be considered as sanc- tuaries for the disabled, and mutually protected. The French commander, a nobleman distin- guished for benevolence, readily acceded to the proposition. After the battle of Dettingen, when the British hospital was at Feckenheim, a village upon the Maine, at a distance from the camp, the Duke, having occasion to send a detachment to another village upon the opposite bank, and apprehending that this measure might alarm the sick, dispatched
