It has been a traditional custom in the medical departments of the Army and Navy to regard the medical officers as surgeons, the director of each department being referred to as the Surgeon-General. There is but one instance in the history of the medical corps of the Army in which reference is made to a different title, the occasion being the appointment of Dr. William Brown as physician general of the middle department. Dr. Brown served from 1775 to 1780.
In the field of preventive medicine, bacteriology and sanitation, the federal medical services have a brilliant record of achievement, and many epochal contributions to scientific medicine have been madeby officers of the several medical corps.
During the Civil War, Surgeon-General Hammond, well known as a physiologist and neurologist, and founder of the Army Medical Museum, created special hospitals for cardiac, pulmonary and neural diseases, at one of which Da Costa