§ LORD DORCHESTERasked, Whether it is true as stated by a local newspaper that Colonel Pearson's column went into Zululand with only one military surgeon to two full battalions of troops, and whether the Army Hospital Corps is composed of lads about whose want of nerve and experience the doctors complain very bitterly? When he put the Notice on the Paper he thought that a direct denial should be published to the statements which had been made. To send one medical officer a distance of 40 miles from the base of operations in charge of 3,000 men—if that really was the case—would be a subject for severe remark, if not strong reprobation. One newspaper published in Natal said the expression of opinion was general as to the youth and inexperience and want of nerve—which he fancied was another term for incapacity—of those medical attendants who had been formed into a special corps. No branch of the military service called for more direct and immediate attention. He believed that the whole of the new medical system for the Army had been more unsuccessful than some other innovations which he had watched. The Army Hospital Corps had been a gigantic failure; and he hoped, before the close of the Session, there would be an ample discussion of the subject.
§ VISCOUNT BURYsaid, that no Member of the House would dispute the proposition of his noble Friend, that their soldiers in the field deserved, and ought to have, the most skilled, the most careful, and the amplest medical attendance that could possibly be obtained. His noble Friend assumed the truth of the report, which he said he hoped would be contradicted. He asked if it was true that the column of Colonel Pearson had only one military surgeon to two full battalions of troops? Now, if hi s noble Friend had made the slightest inquiry at the Department which he (Viscount Bury) represented he would have 5 received the most ample information to satisfy him that the statement was unfounded, and that his vaticinations were, on this occasion, entirely out of place. He had a statement showing the state of Colonel Pearson's column on the 21st December, 1878. At that date it consisted of:—Europeans, 1,400, with two Army medical officers and two Naval medical officers; Natives, 2,000, with three civil surgeons. The principal medical officer asked for three more medical officers for this column. Three more were at the time on their way to Natal, where they arrived on January 13, 1879. On the 20th of the same month one Medical Department officer and three civil surgeons arrived. With regard to the Hospital Corps, the noble Lord said, that they were composed of boys.
§ LORD DORCHESTERI quoted from a Natal paper.
§ VISCOUNT BURYThe noble Lord asked if the corps was composed of lads without nerve or experience? He (Viscount Bury) had to answer that such was not the case. At that time—December, 1878—there were at the Capo five officers and 142 non-commissioned officers and privates. Of these, there were only nine between the ages of 10 and 20. The majority were between 21 and 26, and above that age there were 60. The average age was 28. Of the 142, only 37 had not passed through a course of field and hospital instruction, and one-half of these were non-commissioned officers of long service—some 20 years—who had never had the opportunity of undergoing instruction. On the arrival of the re-inforcements now on their way to the Cape there would be an ample supply both of officers of the Medical Department and of the Army Hospital Corps; and so far from the men being unskilled men, they were extremely well-trained, and, with the exception of 37, who were mostly old non-commissioned officers, had passed through a detailed course of instruction.