The report of the chief medical officer at City Point from May to October accompanies this.* Tabular reports also are rendered from this office to December 31 of this year. The records of no other army or war furnish a parallel establishment, and I regret the more that time and incompleteness of reports render it difficult to represent its character and value. The monthly reports of sick and wounded rendered by regimental surgeons have been consolidated so far as received (Appendix A#). The reports from the depot field hospitals have been similarly consolidated (Appendix B#).

By order of the Surgeon-General of the Army reports were furnished me from the general hospitals in order that the dispositions of cases sent from the army might be ascertained. Certain sources of error are incident to an army in the field and active operations, but it is believed there reports are as accurate as any heretofore obtained. Wounded are known to have passed directly to depot hospital without being registered in their regiments or entering hospital. Again, sick and wounded of the Ninth and Eighteenth Corps received attention from the Army of the Potomac medical officers, in regard to whom no reports have ever been forwarded by the corps medical officers to this office for consolidation. I estimate the total number of wounded who were attended to by this department in the year ending December 31, 1864, at 60,300. The annual report shows an aggregate of wounds and injuries (class V) of only 51, 877. There is every reason to believe that the number of sick reported (173,063) falls short of the actual number. Of aggregate sick and wounded, 224,940 reported (or the total 233,363), a number passed out of the army to general hospital, reported in annual report as 70,858, but, including those not reported and those of other corps attached temporarily to the army, should be 80,181.

NOTE.-(It is to be remembered that those sent from the division to depot hospital are reported by regimental surgeons as sent to general hospital. It is not improbable that men wounded and sick borne on regimental and division hospital reports, who have died in depot hospital, have been reported numerically and by name on the regimental report, in which case they would be reported twice, and the aggregate of deaths reported in the army much exceed the actual number. There is also a source of error in reports from Northern (general) hospitals, who report upon men as belonging to the Army of the Potomac who did not belong to it.)

Number of sick and wounded remaining in Army of the Potomac December 31, 1863................................. 3,136

The whole number sick and wounded of the army taken on sick report in the year 1864 reported......................... 224,940

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228,076

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Of these the following disposition has been made so far as reported:

Returned to duty:

In the field...................................... 150,029

From depot field hospitals........................ 13,690

From Northern general hospitals................... 22,786

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186,505

Transferred to Veteran Reserve Corps:

In the field...................................... 556

From general hospitals............................ 311

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867

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*See report of Surg. Edward B. Dalton, Vol. XXXVI, Part I, p. 269, and Vol. XL, Part I, p. 269.

#Omitted, a summary thereof appearing in this report.

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