There was a great want of proper attendants in the hospital, and many a time I have heard the sick crying for drink and assistance during the whole night, without receiving it. There seemed also to be a scarcity of medical officers during the Peninsular war. I have known wounded men often to be three days after an engagement before it came to their turn to be dressed, and it may be safely calculated that one-half of those men were thus lost to the service. Those medical men we had were not always ornaments of the profession. They were chiefly, I believe, composed of apothecaries’ boys, who, having studied a session or two, were thrust into the army as a huge dissecting room, where they might mangle with impunity, until they were drilled into an ordinary knowledge of their business; and as they began at the wrong end, they generally did much mischief before that was attained. The extent of their medical practice in most disorders was to ‘blister, bleed, and purge,’——what then? why ‘blister, bleed, and purge again.’ This method of cure with poor wretches who were anything but over-fed, and whose greatest complaint often was fatigue and want of proper sustenance, was quite à-la-Hornbook, and the sufferers were quickly laid to rest. In the field they did more mischief, being but partially acquainted with anatomy; there was enough of what medical men call _bold practice_. In cutting down upon a ball for the purpose of extracting it, ten chances to one but they severed an artery they knew not how to stem; but this gave no concern to these enterprising fellows, for clapping a piece of lint and a bandage, or a piece of adhesive plaster on the wound, they would walk off very composedly to mangle some other poor wretch, leaving the former to his fate. Here I may be accused of speaking at random, on a subject I do not understand; but there is no man who served in the Peninsular war, but can bear witness to the truth of what I have stated. I, however, do not pretend to say there were not many exceptions to this character; and in justice to the whole, it must be admitted, that the duties of a surgeon on the Peninsula, were fatiguing and arduous in the extreme. The medical department of the French army was much superior to ours at that time in every respect; this can only be accounted for by the superior opportunity they had of studying anatomy, which in Britain is now almost prohibited—more the pity! Those who have witnessed the evils resulting to the army in particular, from imperfectly educated surgeons, must regret that government does not afford greater facilities to the study.