(seq. 44)

August 15th 1816

Major Genl Brown:

Sir,
When I enquired in my recent letter whether it
would be your pleasure that I should visit the posts &
make the enquiries, [deleted text] make report
on the plan of my visit the last season, I should
have detailed my reasons for it-

General Porter says he has never paid any attention
to the medicine hall [deleted], & is ignorant of their re-
lative duty, or relative grades. His idea is that a
Hospital is the surgeon of a [underlined] hospital[underlined], if there be no
hospital he has nothing to do. The medical director-
ship of the Junior Surgeon of a Department he has
no idea of, and he says that he has never once
turned his thoughts to that subject, and therefore he
gave it as his opinion that I had better write to
you on the subject of visiting posts, among other