THE NAVAL ASSISTANT-SURGEONS CASE.

In cases where science is concerned, the British Government resembles Goldsmith's Principal of the University of Louvain in

his opinion upon Greek I have ten thousand florins a year without Greek ; I eat heartily without Greek ; and in shory continued he, 'ash don't know Greek, I do not believe there is any good in it.' " In matters of absolute necessity—as charts and astronomical observations for the Navy—some attention may seem to be paid to the subject, though very little to the men em- ployed; now and then an effort may appear to be made upon an abstract question, when some individual high in office, or holding a post of influence, rides a particular subject for a hobby,—as the discovery of the North-west Passage ; but the rule is that of neglect. Lord John Russell, may tell us it is a result of our free institutions,—that an absolute monarch or his government may spend money, on men and enterprises which reflect a lustre on themselves and their age, but that free members of Parliament, and free voters, have none of these aspirations, and would rather keep the money to themselves. There may be some grains of truth in this view, but we believe the real cause is that avowed by the worthy Louvain Professor. The medical service, at least in the Navy, has contempt super- added to neglect. The Assistant-Surgeons are rated and treated pretty much as they were when Smollett, about the middle of the last century, drew his pictures of medical students and doe- tors' mates. Since that time, John Hunter and a long list of il- lustrious surgeons both at home and abroad have investigated the structure and laws of the human frame, raising surgery and its cognate studies to the highest ranks of science. Since that time, a total revolution has been made in medical studies and practitioners: the surgeons have ceased to belong to the Livery Company of "Barber-Surgeons," and have been incorporated in a college of their own ; the Apothecaries Company has been esta- blished by act of Parliament ;` and each body requires from all candidates proofs of a liberal education and a regular course of medical and surgical study in addition to viva-voce examination. Since that time, the whole system of life has changed in its man- ners, in its estimate of things] -in its straining after " appearances" and its judgment upon those who do not "keep them up," and in an almost morbid refinement and delicacy. The Lords of the Admiralty are alone uninfluenced by that mutability which has changed all around them. They still persist in thrusting the well-educated, perhaps the highly-educated and studious 'young man (for the College of Surgeons will not receive a candidate till he is twenty-one) among the boys in the cockpit or gun-room ! Midshipmen and Masters'-Mates are well enough in their way. They are the embryo of heroes, the nursery plants of the quarter- deck; capital are they in a nautical novel, especially one of Mar- 17at's ; very good too in a series of pictorial illustrations of the pranks of the Midshipmen's berth ; and not amiss (as a distant sight) when they are set Off share "on leave," with the activity and mischief of se many monkeys, but with a boisterons vivacity which- the, family of the Sitniadte rarely reach. They are not, however, the best companions to those whoie maxim is " any- thing for a quiet life "; still less are they fitted for the associ- ates of the studious. Fancy ayoting surgeon anxious to continue his studies, or perhaps to extend-their range, introduced to the

"Jest and youthful jollity, Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter bolding both his sides,"

which (with a little more coarseness than Milton has given) ob- tain among "reefers" afloat. Or if it be said that "my Lords" do not want students but practical men, just 'imagine an Assistant-Surgeon with the weight of novel responsibility, and the anxieties of to him a difficult and perhaps in reality a doubt- ful case, sitting down to consider it among the humours of the Middies! Which of " my Lords " or their Secretaries would like to be physicked, or undergo even a "minor operation of surgery," by a practitioner who had considered his case in such a scene, or whose frame of mind was fashioned by continually living- in it! And what right have they to subject thousands upon thousands of men, whose welfare it is their duty to overlook, to a risk of this kind ?

The risk of inferior medical attendance is, however, obviated, strange as it may seem, by the chance of Jack's getting no at- tendance at all. The zeal for means of observation, and the com- petition in the profession, are so great, that any institution may command gratuitous service to any extent on the certainty of prac- tice and the chance of introduction. Hundreds are anxiously looking out for any "opening," and men can be found who will endure the discomforts of a whaler on the chalice of shares, or give their services to a vessel for their passage, on the speculation of something turning up at the end of the outward voyage. The name of the naval service is a distinction ; there is the excitement of variety and novelty ; the inexperienced may fancy it a means of forming a connexion ; and the pay is beyond that of a sub- ordinate situation on shore, and equal to that of smaller practices, being from 7s. to 10s. a day: yet, incredible as the facts might appear in the absence of conclusive evidence, the Royal Navy cannot get Assistant-Surgeons!

Q. 2653. "During the course of your service as Commissioner and Physician- General, have you found any difficulty in procuring the services of medical officers on the list when you required them ?'—" Very great difficulty."

A. 2612. "About this time last year I had really no candidate on the list at all. I was obliged to write to my private friends, &c. Some of the Edinburgh Professors told me there was a feeling against the Navy." Evidence of Sir IV. Burnett, Director-General, Naval Medical Department, before the Commissioners, &c., pp. 185, 187.

• •

"There are several young men who, having within the last year left the Naval Medical Service, are now serving in the Army and East India Company's Service. Dr. Pred. Jas. Brown, M.D. of the Universities of Edinburgh and London, at the latter of which he gained medals and other high honours, who was declared by Sir John Richardson, when Inspector of Haslar Hospital, to be one of the best stethoscopists he ever knew, and altogether a most accomplished medical officer, has just obtained his discharge from H.M.S. Howe and from the service, at his own request, in consequence of the false position in which he found himself as an As- sistant-Surgeon in the Navy."

" He who is good at excuses is good at nothing else." If we apply this proverbial wisdom to the Admiralty, there is a diffi- culty in coming to a decision : they are ready with excuses, but they are none of them good. By the help of a pamphlet before us,* they may be stated and disposed of.

1. There is a want of room in ships, especially in small ships, for the cabin of an Assistant-Surgeon.

" In line-of-battle ships, room, as a general role, can be found for additional cabins in the cockpit.

" In ships of the frigate class, there is usually on the lower deck a cabin in use by the Captain's Steward, which from its contents is often a great inconvenience on the deck. Surely, a small portion of the princely allowance of space allotted to the Captain's cabin could be spared, in order that this small apartment should be on the main deck, where one man only eats and sleeps, rattler than on the lower deck, where every one else (it may be several hundreds) eats and sleeps. By this change one cabin would be provided. In brigs, &c., commanded by Com- manders, there is the spare cabin vacated by the additional Lieutenant. In brigs and smaller vessels commanded by Lieutenants, the Assistant-Surgeon already has a cabilb And although we are decidedly of opinion that it is in every point of view desirable that the Assistant-Surgeon should be received into the mess of the Lieutenant commanding, still, if the privacy of that officer's cabin be con- sidered indispensably necessary, Assistant-Surgeons must be content toremain in their present position on board this class of vessels."

2. There would be a necessity for an increase of pay. " This objection cannot be better met than by stating the rates of pay of the undermentioned officers, who are already in the ward-room. Pay per day.

First Lieutenant of Marines from 6s. 6d. to Is. 6d.

Second ditto ditto 5 3 Chaplain 8 9 Naval Instructor 7 0 to 10 0

" The pay of the Assistant-Surgeon being from 7s. to 10s. per day, it follows that he has more pay than two of-the ward-room officers, and an Average of about the same as two others."

There are two other excuses,—one an injustice to Mates, the other that if a change were made in the case of Assistant-Sur- geons more officers would demand the same privileges : but, though fully answered in the pamphlet, they are too ridiculous for notice here. Some anomalies springing out of the present practice, however, are worth exhibition, if only for the purpose of

showing how wrong generates absurdity.

" The officers of Marines who join the service at an early age (seventeen) immediately become ward-roamofficers, provided with Cabins, servants, Sf C. * • • " The Assistant-Surgocuris the only officer who, having reached the' eriod of manhood, and acquired a profession altogether independently of the 'service, is refused admission to the-society of other officers of his own age. it may be asked why is this so? Is his rank, that of a Lieutenant in the,Arzny, toolow to qualify him for ward-mom privileges? The simple answer to this is, there • " An Exposition of the Case of the Assistant-Surgeon of the Royal Navy. By a Naval Medical Officer. Second edition." are already two officers in the ward-room, one of whom, the First Lieutenant of Marines" IR the equal, and the other, the Second Lieutenant of Marines; is the inferior m rank to the Assistant-Surgeon. Notwithstanding the express wording of the order in Council, which says,' the said Naval Medical Officers should have the same rank with the officers of the same class in his Majesty's Land Forces,' the degradation of the Naval Assistant-Surgeon is strikingly apparent on any occasion when troops are embarked in a man-of-war. The Army Assistant- &ogees then by right takes his place among the officers at the ward-room table, while his Naval brother, who is mocked with the same rank, is to be found in the gun-room or cockpit with the Midshipmen. The position of the Naval Assistant- Surgeon will seem still more anomalous, and more bitterly absurd, when it is stated, that in the event of his being ordered to do duty with the Marines, and with them embark in a man-of-war, he then becomes entitled to the ward-room, if only of one day's standing in the service, while his brother officer employed in the medical duties of the ship can hope. for nothing more than the cockpit, al- though he may have been twenty years in the service."

We have said that the Admiralty was unchanged. This, how ever, is not quite accurate. In the case of Engineers, who could not be dispensed with, and the Schoolmaster, about whose pre- sence abroad there was a good deal of real interest and no small portion of party and Parliamentary cant, " my Lords" had to knock under.

"Respectable and well-educated men even of their class in life were not to be ob- tained as chief engineers so long as they were ranked with the gunner, the boat- swain, and the carpenter. It was therefore deemed expedient to give the Engineer the rank of Captain, and the Inspector of Machinery afloat the rank of Major in the Army, constituting both of them ward-room officers." "As in 1805 ` the Naval service had materially suffered from the want of Sur- geons and Surgeons' Mates,' so in 1840 it was found to suffer from the difficulty of obtaining properly-qualified persons to instruct the young officers; and the Admiralty then found it necessary to abolish altogether the designation of School. master, and substitute in its place that of Naval Instructor.'

" In this case the measure was clearly justified by the neceaeity. But if it was right to raise the Schoolmaster from the rank of a quarter-deck petty officer to Mat of a Captain in the Army, and call him ' Naval Instructor,' with ward- room privileges, in order to obtain a superior class of men for the moral and intel- lectual culture of the Midshipmen ; it is surely equally right to grant to the As. sistant-Surgeon the privileges of a rank he already possesses, to secure for the whole ship's company the best possible medical advice, by encouraging men of the highest qualifications to enter and continue in the Naval service."

The subject has been mooted in Parliament ; the surgical bo- dies of London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, have addressed the Ad- miralty on the matter ; and the justice to the surgeons is as clear as the advantage to the sailors: but if the matter is to be settled, it must be pressed. Justice may claim, Parliament may talk, and science may urge in vain. The question will not be settled until it become less troublesome for the Whigs to enforce the matter upon the bureaucracy than to resist it. Daniel Whittle Harvey, or Thomas Slingaby Duncombe, would perhaps have " squeezed " it out of them before now. How little disposition there is to give way among the red-tapists and men of routine, who really rule our rulers in such things as these, may be learned by an order, issued, in apparent defiance, no longer ago than last February. On the first appointment of a medical officer, he shall receive a commission as Acting Assistant-Surgeon, and shall remain as such during a probation of twelve months; after which, if he produce the required certificates, he shall be confirmed-as an Assistant-Surgeon from the date of his first appointment. He shall while serving in either of the before-mentioned capacities only be entitled to mess with the Mates and Midshipmen in the gun-room, or, as the case may be, according to the rating of the ship."—Extract from Memorandum, dated .4d- miralty, February 1, 18411