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[259] in the Bureau law were thus given effect for at least one year after the close of the war, and that date, hardly fixed by any single event, was given a liberal interpretation. June 16th, Surgeon Caleb W. Horner became my medical director. With alacrity he entered upon his multifarious duties, and little by little extended the Medical Division throughout the States where the Bureau was already operating, especially to all the colonies, camps, hospitals, and orphan asylums directly and indirectly under our charge.

From time to time as he needed them he called for medical assistants and they were promptly furnished. By the middle of August he had seventeen such assistants from the army, covering the whole territory from Maryland to Louisiana. The last of November he wrote: “Although the Bureau has not yet reached the remote sections of the South, already forty-two hospitals with accommodations for 4,500 patients are in operation and facilities are afforded for the treatment of 5,000 sick in twenty-four asylums and established colonies.”

Besides the medical officers designated, eightythree physicians and 180 male and 177 female attendants were employed by contract. With regard to the work of this great division it may be said that at the close of the year 2,531 white refugees had been under medical treatment and 45,898 freedmen had received medical aid, yet there remained in all the hospitals only 388 refugees and 6,645 freedmen. The percentage of deaths during the year, owing to the previous hardships to which the patients had been exposed, was unusually large; for refugees 9 per cent had died, and for freedmen 13 per cent. Before systematic medical aid was extended to these people they were found to be

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