Medicine and the American Revolution: how diseases and their treatments affected the colonial army / by Oscar Reiss. Jefferson, N.C.:McFarland & Co., 1998. Main Library E283.R45 1998 "The Medical Department started with a catch-as-catch-can system of local physicians to care for the wounded of Lexington and Concord. This was followed by a system developed by the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, which was taken over and expanded by the Continental Congress. It went through growing pains, in-fighting between regimental surgeons and the central authority, intrigues, recriminations, and courts-martial, only to end completely broken up and discarded on the junk heap in 1783." Chapters include: Smallpox and the Canadian Invasion, Syphilis and the Loss of New York, Valley Forge and Scabies, and Malaria and the Southern Campaign.