3. The Medical Organization for War
In the Middle Ages there was no medical organization with armies, nor were there even any surgeons. The sick and wounded were left to shift for themselves, and were tended, if at all, by private persons out of charity, or in monasteries, for the monks alone possessed any knowledge of surgery and medicine in those days.
Rudimentary provision for surgery in armies is found in the organization of the German mercenaries of the sixteenth century, where a surgeon was appointed by each Captain for his Troop of Reiters or Company of Landsknechts. Later, a Surgeon was attached to the Regiment, and medical care, from being purely a matter for the Captain to organize, became a Regimental responsibility. By this time the practice of surgery had long passed from the hands of monks into those of the barbers. Thus in the seventeenth century the Prussians had Feldschere, Field Barbers, attached to Companies and Regiments for surgical duties. There also began to be during the sixteenth century a certain number of what we should call Staff Surgeons, attached to the Higher Commands, who were supposed to supervise the Regimental Surgeons. The latter gradually became better educated, while the Company Surgeons under their supervision remained merely rude subordinates.
During the seventeenth century the sick and wounded were treated in tents pitched in the rear of the camp as long as the army was stationary, and tended by some of the women who accompanied it. When it moved, they were handed over to local authorities, or left in the villages near the fighting. An effort was then made in most countries to establish hospitals in the chief towns in the theatre of war, into which the wounded could be collected for better tending. By the eighteenth century Army Surgeons were allotted to these hospitals, which seem first to have been organized in France, where, however, they were managed by contractors. The abuses of this system led to the hospitals being placed under the Intendants of the Army, a change which effected little improvement, as the Intendants, through ignorance and apathy, hampered the action of the medical department, and delayed any improvement in it. France was the first country to organize any sort of mobile hospital, the germ of our field ambulance. One ambulance wagon was provided per 1,000 men, and in battle, dressing stations were formed in rear, to which wounded found their way, or were carried on stretchers. Stationary hospitals were also established in rear, and the modern system of evacuation of wounded to the rear was rudely organized. The same idea was started in Austria, and, in a less developed form, in Germany.
During the eighteenth century we find an organization of Regimental Surgeons, with attendants and stretcher bearers, and a provision of field equipment carried in wagons. Thus units corresponding to Field Ambulances were gradually organized in the armies of France, Austria, and Prussia. There were larger organizations of the same nature at Head-Quarters of the Armies, and of the Higher Commands when these were introduced in France during the Napoleonic Wars. These Field Ambulances had ambulance wagons, and other wagons carrying the dispensary and kitchen, and the necessary equipment, stores, and supplies, and were manned by a Corps of Hospital Orderlies and Stretcher Bearers. In rear of these units were stationary hospitals under military control. The Austrian organization was nearly as good as in France, but that of Prussia and other States lagged considerably behind them. In fact the Prussian troops had no medical organization, beyond the provision of regimental surgeons, at Jena, nor at Eylau, nor even at Waterloo.
It was not till during the nineteenth century that modern Medical Organization gradually evolved into its present highly developed condition in all civilized armies. This can be studied in the description of the British Medical Service ([Chapter X.]), which is nearly identical with that of Germany, and may be considered to represent a high type of Medical Organization for War.
PART V
MILITARY COMMAND
CHAPTER XXII
PRINCIPLES OF COMMAND
This work will now conclude with some remarks on the nature of Military Command, the methods by which it is exercised, and the psychological characteristics of soldiers and their leaders. The final chapter is devoted to the last subject, a matter worth deeper consideration in connection with Command than it has yet received. When it is remembered that, as stated in the first chapter, it is the main object of Organization to facilitate Command, the reason for touching on these subjects in this work will be obvious.