Page 18 - The Story of the RAMC

Under the inspiring leadership of Major Jack Whatley, whose name will always be remembered in the annals of the Corps, the boys of the Apprentices’ School begin their medical and scientific training before entering man’s service. The school has grown with amazing rapidity and its fine spirit as well as its outstanding successes in the examinations rooms and on the sports ground are unsurpassed in the Army.
The need for the careful training of the rank and file of a Regular Medical Corps was fully appreciated by that great lady, Florence Nightingale, to whom the Corps owes so much. When pointing out, how in time of war, a vast expansion would take place by the addition of outside organisations and private individuals, she wrote “Unquestionably the best plan with us would be to render our Army Hospital Corps thoroughly efficient on its present basis and strength ... after the Corps is thoroughly efficient there would be little difficulty in devising a scheme for increasing it and admitting volunteer assistance. But the very first thing is to make the very best of what we have and make it into an efficient nucleus. No amount of adding to inefficiency will make inefficiency into efficiency”.
This is as true today as it was on the day it was written, the 8th of February, 1857.
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