method of getting these men into the field and keeping them there in the most serviceable condition and with the highest attainable economy of life and health. After studying for fifteen months the sanitary interests of our great Army, we have arrived at definite conclusions as to measures necessary to protect these new levies against certain of the dangers which threaten them, and it is our plain duty, as a "commission of inquiry and advice in regard to the sanitary interests of the U. S. forces," to submit these conclusions, most respectfully, to the consideration of yourself, their Commander-in-Chief.

The careless and superficial medical inspection of recruits made at least 25 per cent. of the volunteer army raised last year not only utterly useless, but a positive incumbrance and embarrassment, filling our hospitals with invalids and the whole country with exaggerated notions of the dangers of war that now seriously retard the recruiting of the new levies we so urgently need. The wise and humane regulations of the U. S. Army that require a minute and searching investigation of the physical condition of every recruit were, during the spring and summer of 1861, criminally disregarded by inspecting officers. In 29 per cent. of the regiments mustered into service during that period there had been no pretense even of a thorough inspection. Few regiments have thus far taken the field that did not include among their rank and file many boys of from fourteen to sixteen- men with hernia, varicose veins, consumption, and other diseases, wholly unfitting them for duty, and which could not have escaped the eye of a competent medical officer-and others with constitutions broken by intemperance or disease, or long past the age of military service. Each of these men cost the nation a certain amount of money, amounting in the aggregate to millions of dollars. Not one of them was able, however well disposed, to endure a week's hardship or render the nation a dollar's worth of effective service in the field. Some regiments left 10 per cent. of their men in hospitals on the road before they reached the seat of war. It increases for a time the strength of Army on paper, but diminishes its actual efficiency. It is mere source of weakness, demoralization, and wasteful expense, and of manifold mischief to the Army and to the national cause. The frequent spectacle of immature youth and men of diseased or enfeebled constitutions returning to their homes shattered and broken down after a month of camp life, destructive to themselves and useless to the country, has depressed the military spirit and confidence of the people. How can we escape a repetition of this manifest evil, except by a more vigilant and thorough inspection of our new levies, and how can such inspection be secured?

We respectfully submit that no new recruits should be accepted until they have been examined by medical officers of the U. S. Army, entirely without personal interest in the filling up of any regiment. And these medical men should have had some experience in the hardships and exposures of military life. No one, in short, should be allowed to serve a as a medical inspector of recruits who has not passed a Regular Army board named by the Surgeon-General himself, and convened at some one of the great centers of medical science. A large percentage of the disease and weakness of our armies up to this time (in other words, the waste of many millions of our national resources) has been due to the inexperience of medical and military officers alike as to the peculiar dangers and exposures that surround the soldier in camp and on the march, and which render the money the nations has