[278] Though the writer was never on the staff of a general hospital, he visited a large number of them, knew personally many medical officers assigned to duty in them, and was familiar with their general plan of operation. The most valuable information concerning them, however, is to be found in a remarkable series of addresses and papers published in the Southern practitioner, many of which had been delivered before the Association of Medical Officers of the Army and Navy of the Confederacy. This series is an invaluable mine of information, and from it most of the facts given in the following pages are drawn. It must be remembered, of course, that the men from whom I quote, whose writings are abstracted, or whose success is described, were among the most distinguished officers of the service. Added to professional skill they possessed executive and administrative ability which would have won success under any circumstances. That all the Confederate hospitals were so successful, either upon the medical or upon the administrative side, is, of course, improbable. The problem confronting the Medical Department and the manner in which it was met is thus stated by the surgeon-general, Doctor Samuel Preston Moore:
The only building in Richmond adapted to hospital purposes, the almshouse (a large brick building, well suited, capable of accommodating say five hundred patients), had been converted into a hospital,
