The unhappy consequences of this general lack of intelligent appreciation of the importance of the healing art were soon revealed by the ruthless hand of war. The Battle of Lexington brought out the disquieting fact that the Massachusetts authorities, although in most military branches they had made detailed arrangements for the coming conflict, had entirely forgotten to organize any hospital department, and had nothing to rely on but a few volunteer regimental surgeons, ill-trained and worse-equipped. (Precisely the same omission occurred when the Continental Congress enacted the first general army “establishment.”) It was the old, old story of “unpreparedness”—old, yet ever new in our national experience.
In that first skirmish, it is true, the American wounded were a mere handful, and were mostly taken to their own homes nearby and treated by their own family doctors. But the British wounded who fell by the wayside numbered at least two or three score, almost all serious cases, who had of necessity been abandoned by their retreating comrades. They caused their captors no little concern. One of the first orders of the Council of War after the fight was “that the officers of the guards who have care of prisoners…procure good surgeons to attend the wounded.”[1]
- ↑ April 21, 1775. Henshaw’s Orderly Book, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, xv, 89.
