memorials to Congress, procured the passing
of a bill, drawn up by its own executive
Committee, reorganising fundamentally the
medical department of the army, appointing: a
body of general inspectors, and substituting
for the old system of seniority, promotion for
competency without regard to  grade or age.
This victory over routine, having been won,
the Commission itself sought the most competent
man for Surgeon-General, and endeavoured
to forestal any chance, of an appointment by
favouritism into which the Secretary of War
might be tempted. The Commission again
won its battle, and secured the promotion of
Dr. W. A. Hammond, Assistant-Surgeon on the
Medical Staff, to the post of Surgeon-General,
an advance from the rank of first lieutenant,
with charge of a single hospital, to that of
brigadier-general, with the entire control of
the Medical Department of the Army. With
its own man— a competent man, who had every
reason to be grateful to it— thus in authority,
the Sanitary Commission had its way made
very straight. Dr. Hammond revised his list
of subordinates with a bold hand, got rid of
the obstructive and incompetent men, and
honestly sought the best help in organisation
of hospitals, foundation of an army medical
school, and so forth. Before the civil war, the
United States army rivalled the Austrian in
exclusiveness and firm adherence to routine;
and who can tell what tales of pestilence we
might have heard, but for the victory thus won
on behalf of woman's work in time of peril?

A part of the business of the Sanitary
Commission was to diffuse gratuitously among the
army surgeons, practical pamphlets of information
upon military hygiene, and the most important
points of army medicine and surgery.
Such pamphlets were the " Directions to Army
Surgeons on the Battle-field," by our own
Guthrie, and the "Advice as to Camping,"
issued by the British Sanitary Commission at
the time of the Crimean war; pamphlets on
"Pain and Anaesthetics," and on " Hemorrhage
from Wounds, and the best Means of Arresting
it," by the father of American surgery,
Dr.Valentine Mott; pamphlets on army
vaccination, amputations, treatment of fractures,
scurvy, fevers, &c. The largely increased
number of army surgeons had to be drawn
from civil life, and really needed information as
to the new forms of practice in the field;
while everywhere the teachings of Florence
Nightingale were actively diffused. Again,
over the wide surface of the states involved in
war, there was great variation of latitude, and
almost every imaginable difference of ground,
producing local differences in the character and
aspect of disease. Special investigation was made
of this subject, not only for the information
of the medical staff, but as a necessary guide to
the right distribution of the requisite supplies.

When at the beginning of the war, the lines of
action corresponded with the course of navigable
rivers, floating hospitals accompnied the armies.
Here, with perhaps five hundred or a thousand
sick soldiers arranged in a single river steamer,
well-born American women and some English
volunteers were fearless and faithful nurses.
Let us see them at work. A lady speaks:

"We were called to go on board the Wissahickon,
from hence to the Sea-shore, and run
down in the latter to West Point, to bring
off twenty-five men said to be lying there sick
and destitute. Two doctors went with us.
After hunting an hour for the Sea-shore in
vain, and having got as low as Cumberland, we
decided (we being Mrs.— and I, for the
doctors were new and docile, and glad to leave
the responsibility upon us women) to push on
in the tug, rather than leave the men another
night on the ground, as a heavy storm of wind
and rain had been going on all day. The pilot
remonstrated but the captain approved; and if
the firemen had not suddenly let out the fires,
and detained us two hours, we might have got
our men on board and returned comfortably
soon after dark. But the delay lost us the
precious daylight. It was night before the last
man was got on board. There were fifty-six of
them— ten very sick ones. The boat had a
little shelter-cabin. As we were laying
mattresses on the floor, whilst the doctors were
finding the men, the captain stopped us, refusing
to let us put typhoid fever below the deck, on
account of the crew, he said, and threatening to
push off, at once, from the shore. Mrs.— and
I looked at him. I did the terrible and she the
pathetic,— and he abandoned the contest. The
return-passage was rather an anxious one. The
river is much obstructed with sunken ships and
trees; the night was dark; and we had to feel
our way, slackening speed every ten minutes;
If we had been alone it wouldn't have mattered,
but to have fifty men unable to move upon our
hands, was too heavy a responsibility not to
make us anxious. The captain and pilot said
the boat was leaky, and remarked awfully 'that
the water was six fathoms deep about there;'
but we saw their motive and were not scared.
We were safe alongside the Spaulding by
midnight; but Mr. Olmsted's tone of voice, as he
said, ' You don't know how glad I am to see
you,' showed how much he had been worried.
And yet it was the best thing we could have
done, for three, perhaps five, of the men would
have been dead before morning. To-day (Sunday)
they are living, and likely to live."

A plan for the swift construction of a good
receiving hospital, the notion of great soup
caldrons on wheels for feeding the sick and
wounded after battle, scrofulous inspection,
active agitation and investigation of the
question of what is to be done in the future with
the disabled soldiers of three years of war, are,
among the wholesome work of the Commission,
which has been able, after every great battle, to
despatch a voluntary contribution of necessaries,
in addition to the provision made by the medical
department of the army. Thus, after the second
battle of Bull Run— when General Pope's army,
with a loss of sixteen thousand in killed and
wounded, was in retreat— the Confederates had