Surgeon-General's office, ready to be placed in the books when the text is printed. It is this first part alone [that is, the first of the three parts] which the Surgeon-General wishes to have printed at present. The cost of printing and binding will be as follows: - Paper and printing five thousand copies, two volumes of nine hundred pages each, $24,625; binding the same in cloth, $2,800. Total, $27,425."

We have here a definite statement of the actual cost of the publication of two volumes as estimated by the public printer, being the first third of the whole Medical History of the War.

And now, Mr. Speaker, I desire to say that in the annals of medical history there is not anything more creditable to a nation than the record of our medical operations during the war. Wherever a knowledge of the work of our surgeons has gone, it has received the most flattering commendations of professional and scientific men. In the course of an inquiry before the Committee on Military Affairs, it was ascertained that during the whole war, notwithstanding the great number of sick and wounded, and the enormous preparations for their care, our comparatively new ambulance system and our vast outlay for medical supplies, - the average cost of medical attendance upon our soldiers was but ten dollars a year; and that, I venture to say, is less than the cost of medical attendance for any other army in modern times.

This resulted from the fact that we have a most admirable medical organization. And, sir, from the beginning of the war to its close the scientific gentlemen who had charge of the medical department of our army preserved all the most remarkable medical and surgical results of the war. We have to-day in this city, filling the old Ford's Theatre, probably the most perfect and valuable medical museum in the world. Professional men and representatives of learned societies at home and abroad concur in pronouncing it the most valuable medical museum ever yet collected. But the materials now ready for publication are even more valuable than the museum.

I hold in my hand the report of a recent meeting of a leading medical association in Paris, in which the medical results of the two great wars in modern times are discussed, — the Crimean war, including both the French and English armies, and our own late war. The rates of mortality resulting from capital operations in the three armies are exhibited in the following table.

"In thigh amputations, then, while the American and the British lose 64 in 100, the French lose 91.8. The former lose but 26 per cent in leg amputations, and we lose 71.9. Such a result is heart-rending; it is essential to discuss the cause of such a state of things, for the welfare of French soldiers and the honor of French surgery demand imperiously that they be removed."

It will be seen from this, that while the average mortality in the British army was 40.2 per cent, and in the French army 72.8 per cent, in our army it was only 33.9 per cent, vastly less than in either of the armies of those two great nations.

In this report of the Surgical Society of Paris, with the whole record of the Crimean war before them as reported by the medical authorities of Great Britain and France, and with only a preliminary report bearing the modest title of a "Circular " from the Medical Department of the Army of the United States, I find the following testimony to the value of the "Circular": —

"One might be astonished to see these 'Circulars' of the SurgeonGeneral referred to, in comparison with the voluminous and formal reports of the British and French armies, since they were printed simply as a preface to the general medical and surgical history of our war, and are modestly entitled by the Surgeon-General Reports on the Extent and Nature of the Materials available for the Preparation of a Medical and Surgical History of the Rebellion.' Yet M. Lefort only concurs with the other leading European reviewers in his estimate of these well-known documents, of which the chief medical quarterly, the British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, declares that, professedly only a preliminary survey, it will itself long form an authentic book of reference both to the military and civil surgeon.'"

Even a mere résumé of the materials in our possession is looked upon as of more value than the completed record, both

French and English, of the medical results of the Crimean war. I cannot leave this report without quoting one other passage, in which the comparison is still further carried out.

"The English surgeons kept their wounded at their field hospitals, at Balaklava, at the Monastery of St. George, and only sent them to their hospitals on the Dardanelles when they were able to be moved. Why were our wounded so little cared for? M. Chenu replies that the French army had six times the effective force of the English. Then the necessities of the former were six times greater. It is a culpable want of foresight to send a numerous army far from the mother country, with inadequate supplies. The question reduces itself to this: Now, who was responsible? Was it our army surgeons? Surely not. Eighty-two officers of the French medical staff laid down their lives in consequence of epidemics brought about by maladministration and the neglect of hygienic precautions, - dangers encountered by the entire medical staff with that courage and abnegation which everywhere characterize the true physician. But, alas in France the medical service of the army is not directed by medical men, and such men as MM. Levy, Larre, Serivé, and Legouest have no voice in the arrangements indispensable to the physical well-being of our soldiers. When the medical director of the Army of the East wished to erect a few pavilion field-hospitals, he had for weeks to exhaust his patience in demonstrating their necessity to intelligent, well-meaning men, who were quite incapable of comprehending his reasoning, and who followed his advice or not, according to their personal prejudices or predilections.

Happier than the French army, the Americans have no system of military intendants'; and though their medical officers had to grapple with difficulties very much greater than those we encountered in the Crimea; although their theatre of war embraced a territory larger than the whole of France; although in the first two years only of the war the enormous aggregate of 143,318 wounded was one of the problems with which they had to deal, — the American military surgeons, left to themselves, free to display all their energy, to avail themselves of all opportunities, to profit by their special training, found means to open to the sick and wounded soldiers two hundred and five general hospitals, containing 136,894 beds; to tend these so that they lost but thirty-three per cent of those operated on; whereas, French surgeons under the tutelage of the military administrative officers had at their command in the Crimea inadequate hospitals and supplies which were a mockery, and lost seventy-two per cent of the patients operated on.

"And yet France was supposed to possess, before the campaign began, a complete medical organization and sufficient supplies, while in America it was necessary to organize everything."

Now, Mr. Speaker, I desire to say that, when our nation occupies so proud a position, when we have in our hands the most priceless materials that the history of science has ever afforded on this subject, when we are in a condition to exhibit what will be of more value to the world, and of more credit to the American medical profession than any other document ever possessed by any nation in the world, it seems to me small business for us to chaffer about the matter of a few hundred dollars of expense. Were the cost of publication all that gentlemen suppose, I should be in favor of printing this work. Even far-sighted economy demands this expenditure. We have already, by the authority given by Congress, ordered the plates; they are engraved and paid for, ready to be set up with the type. The materials are all here, and a little over twenty-seven thousand dollars will give us five thousand copies of one third of the whole of this magnificent work. I shall regret it more than I can express, if this Congress should omit the opportunity to give this work the publicity which it deserves, and take to our country the credit which it has so justly earned.

STRENGTHENING THE PUBLIC CREDIT.

REMARKS MADE IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MARCH 3, 1869.

MR. GARFIELD was one of the early advocates, if not indeed the originator, of the measure for legalizing gold contracts. February 10, 1868, he introduced a bill for that purpose. This bill became part of a more comprehensive measure, viz. Mr. Schenck's bill of January 20, 1869, "To Strengthen the Public Credit, and Relating to Gold Contracts." This bill, variously amended, passed both houses at the close of the session; but the President gave it a "pocket veto." Reintroduced at the first session of the Forty-first Congress, it promptly passed both houses, and was the first act approved by President Grant, March 18, 1869. It may be fitly transcribed here :

"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That, in order to remove any doubt as to the purpose of the government to discharge all just obligations to the public creditors, and to settle conflicting questions and interpretations of the laws by virtue of which such obligations have been contracted, it is hereby provided and declared that the faith of the United States is solemnly pledged to the payment in coin, or its equivalent, of all the obligations of the United States not bearing interest, known as United States notes, and of all the interest-bearing obligations of the United States, except in cases where the law authorizing the issue of any such obligation has expressly provided that the same may be paid in lawful money or other currency than gold and silver. But none of said interest-bearing obligations not already due shall be redeemed or paid before maturity, unless at such time United States notes shall be convertible into coin at the option of the holder, or unless at such time bonds of the United States bearing a lower rate of interest than the bonds to be redeemed can be sold at par in coin. And the United States also solemnly pledges its faith to make provision at the earliest practicable period for the redemption of the United States notes in coin."

This law may be called the great legal bulwark of the public credit from 1869 to 1879. Attempts were made to repeal it, but in vain. It was a plain declaration that the obligations of the government were to be