Richmond Enquirer

RICHMOND, JANUARY 22.
FOR THE ENQUIRER.
THE NAVY.

As a citizen, I am grateful to any one who in decent terms points out an abuse in our institutions and suggests a remedy. Acknowledgments are due to the author of a piece which appeared in the Enquirer of Dec. 30th, under the signature of A Friend, and I offer my share of them.

I have been for a long time aware, that to maintain the Navy in the high attitude of favor to which it had raised itself, something more was requisite than the listless patronage which has been extended to it, without distrust or enquiry, since the termination of the late war. A passive acknowledgment of its existence by a yearly appropriation for its support, is but a feeble barrier against the abuses which time and indulgence fasten upon all institutions. No one respects the character of many of the gallant men who now compose the Navy, more highly than I do; but I deprecate the sensibility, which forbears to scrutinize the public service for fear of wounding those who are supposed to discharge it. National reputation and safety are coupled with the permanence of the naval establishment no longer than it proves worthy of its permanence.

The writer complains of the absence of the medical officers from their proper posts. Just as the complaint may be, I apprehend that he has touched an instance rather than a principle—a branch of evil rather than the root. There is an inherent weakness in all establishments, where one profession forms a subordinate part of another, of a different character. The chain of responsibility is broken, for the power above does not contain within itself the intelligence of all below. This difficulty is presented at the point where the nautical and medical professions unite, and our laws have created no remedy. The naval commander may control the presence of the surgeon, because the surgeon is his inferior; but after that, every thing rests with the surgeon himself. There is a barrier between him and his superiors in difference of profession, and after he has yielded his personal attendance, he is responsible for the important objects for which he was appointed, to himself alone. Existing laws contain a remedy for the evil of which A Friend complains; the kindly instinct of our nature afford assurance of the treatment the surgeon gives to his patient while he is suffering before him; but what check do our naval laws afford to abuses that have as little connexion with personal presence as with compassion—what surety for the discharge of the obligations which, apart from his daily practice, are due from the surgeon to his profession and his country?

These are serious evils, but they have existed elsewhere and been remedied. The army was to a greater extent a sufferer. During the long and most pressing demand for medical attendance, the complaint was not that the physicians were not present, but that their presence did but little good—that the worthy were employed disadvantageously—that the unworthy had full scope for vice—that the discharge of duty rested more upon moral than official obligations—that disease and death were active, and that caprice, or ignorance or vice obstructed the cure. The remark has of course its exceptions, but the outline, I know to be correct. The act of 1818, in part a revival of former provisions, aimed at the root of the evil. But as first attempts are rarely successful, that act merely served as a means of scrutinizing, and among the principal evils developed, was that which now exists in the navy—the destruction of responsibility by the mingling of professions. The post surgeon was under his garrison commander, the regimental surgeon controlled or liable to be controlled by his colonel, the hospital surgeon and his mates looked to the commanders of their divisions. There was a conflict between dependence and independence. Each could lay his errors upon his chief, while the chief himself had either to decide without knowledge, or to leave it to his inferior to decide for him.

To these evils a remedy was found in a proposition made by the present surgeon general, passed into a law in the year 1821, which broke up the former system and resolved the whole medical body into a distinct department, unconnected, as an integral part, with any special branch of military service. Surgeons were no longer post, or regimental or hospital surgeons. The whole body without reference to location in the army, was subdivided into surgeons and assistant surgeons, responsible to a military commander for duties purely military, to their professional commander the surgeon general for every thing professional. Under this system the medical department is a receiving, administrative and accounting department. The head of it contracts, disburses and distributes. He is responsible to the Treasury on one side, and to the army on the other. In subjects purely medical, the department has the same facilities for the receipt and transmission of intelligence, for the repression of abuses and the application of remedies, as the military branches of the service have in subjects purely military. The practical results of the system correspond to this outline of the organization of it. The concentration of intelligence at the head, is such as to include the course of maladies and remedies at the most distant posts; and such is the diminution of expenditure, that in no year since the system has been fairly in operation, has the annual appropriation for medical purposes amounted to one half of the appropriation of former years. If my recollection serves me, the saving of the first year was upwards of $50,000.

The reasons for my having made this exposition are obvious. With machinery of this sort—proved and at its hand—will the Navy rest contented where it is?