THE MEDICAL SERVICE OE THE EXPEDITION. 201 largely increased, the bearer company consisting of eight medical officers, two quarter-masters, and 213 army hospital men, most ot whom embarked, with the ordnance, commissariat, and transport corps, in the Anglian, which took from the arsenal at Woolwich sixteen tons of medicines. It is to be noted that the arrangements made for the medical and surgical care of the expedition were ample and the organization was complete, as might have been expected from the knowledge and experience of the principal officers: Administrative Deputy-surgeon O'Nial, C.B. and Surgeon-general Irvine, the principal medical officer, who had left Egypt to go home on leave, and now returned to take medical charge of the expeditionary troops. The number of the hospital corps, including those already in Egypt, was stated to be three hundred, and the staff of efficient regular medical officers was so complete that it was calculated there would be five to every thousand men, the full proportion provided in an Indian campaign. The provision also included a case of medical comforts for each of the four hundred small boats constructed for the Nile journey. The number of these boats was, however, afterwards increased to 800, which had also to be provided with their regular equipments, arms, and provisions. Four lady nurses were also to go with the medical department as nursing sisters from the Herbert Hospital and the Guards Hospital, and these were afterwards on duty at the stationary hospital at Wady Haifa.

It is not professed that the troops mentioned include every draft made for the expeditionary force up to the end of August, but enough has been said to show not only that a considerable number of men, including those from India and the East Indies, had been rapidly despatched to the Nile that they might thence go to Dongola, but that the force was varied in character, including men trained to all kinds of service, and most of them prompt in resource and capable of adapting themselves to almost any circumstances of a campaign.

It is not necessary here to enter upon further details of the regiments from which they were selected; and though by the time they had reached Egypt the general nature of the proposed opera-