before Jones was treated with the whisky cure, and, upon receiving
Jones' explanation that he had been heaving rock and had been bitten
on the end of the finger by a little black thing, and after hearing
the remarks of the men that it was very probably a scorpion sting,
this medical officer very sagely diagnosed the accident to that
effect, but was unable to prescribe any remedy because he had not
brought along his emergency case. This medical officer, with his two
attendant hospital satellites, had left both litter and emergency case
upon the transport.

The ordinary line officer or soldier who is somewhat accustomed to
carrying weights and does not require a hospital drill to teach him to
carry a wounded comrade a few yards, looks with a certain degree of
envy upon the possession of a hospital litter with its convenient
straps for weight-carrying, and would consider this a very convenient
means for carrying a pack. This litter is designed to enable two men,
hospital attendants or band men, to pick up a wounded soldier weighing
some 160 or 180 pounds and carry him from fifty yards to a mile if
necessary, to a dressing-station or hospital shack. The medical
field-case No. 1 weighs about sixty pounds filled, and field-case No.
2 weighs about forty pounds. These two cases contain all the medicines
necessary to run a division hospital; the case of emergency
instruments does not weigh above ten or twelve pounds, and would not
be a burden for a child to carry. It is therefore difficult for the
small-minded officer of the line to see why the Medical Department was
unable to have these medicines up at the front. They had the same
means of locomotion provided for the other soldiers, by Nature, and
they had, moreover, no particular necessity for all rushing to the
extreme front. On the contrary, they had from the 23d of June, when
the landing began, at Baiquiri, until the 1st of July, to accomplish a