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204
appointed a Board of Commissioners
to consider the probab.le benefits which would result
from the establishment in Tasmania of a Military
Medical Sanitarium, and Post for Convalescents
·and to demonstrate the advantages the is land offered for such a purpose.
The Commission comprised nine members whose social position carried
great weight in the community:
they were the President of the Commission,
LieutenantColonel Hamilton, the colonel commanding the Royal Engineers ;
Lieutenant-Colonel T. Hungerford of the Bengal Artillery , a comparative
stranger to the island on a visit from India;
ajor W.J. Hutchins, the
officer :in command of the detachment of the 12th Regiment in Hobarton;
R. Douglas, Deputy Military Storekeeper; S. Owen , Assistant Commissary
General;
Lieutenant J.E. Comes , a young officer of the Royal Engineers
on service in Tasmania for only a short period;
Comptroller-General of Convicts and Sheriff;
whose medical experience was confined to Hobarton ;
W. Nairn, the
E.S.P. Bedford, a surgeon
and R. Pitcairn,
the only unofficial member of the Board and a ighly respected legal
practitioner.
The Commission's report was presented on August 2, 1858 , in an
elaborate, printed quarto "Report" of forty-four P .
ages , which included
numerous tables , some lithographed diagrams , and minutes of examinations
of witnesses .
On application to the Governor, Hall was courteously
supplied with one of the hundred copies printed.
Although he was
already concerned at the Board's composition, he was , nonetheless ,
extremely shocked by the "Report" , which threw into bold relief the
disparity which existed between his mode of thought and that of the
Cammission on Health and Sanitation.
Hall voiced his protest in two articles :
the first, a lengthy
nReviewn of the Commission's Report , which was pub lished in the "Mercury
on August 12, and later repub lished in the October number of the
Australian Medical Journal; the second, an article "Military Hospitals
in Tasmania" written in January, 1859 , and pub lished in the English
magazine, The Builder, on April 9, 1859.3
In The Builder Hall described his feelings at the time :
Believing, as I do, from upwards of five and twenty years '
medical experience in this colony, and fourteen years more ,
previously, in England and Ireland, that this island offers
3
The Builder, April 9, 1859 , pp. 248-249 .