that of Medical Director of Department and the duties of the Apothecary General and his assistants were assigned to officers detailed to the purveying department. An important addition was a paragraph calling for the examination by a board of three medical officers of all applicants for the position of assistant surgeon. This provision was not put into effect until after the issue by the War Department of General Orders, No. 58, July 7, 1832, which defined the requisites for appointment. Thus was initiated the foremost factor in the high professional standing of the corps to the present day. An act of Congress of June 30, 1834 (4 Stat. 714), confirmed the provisions for entrance examinations and fixed the pay and allowances of medical officers relative to those of other officers of the service. A dangerous crisis developed in 1830, when, in the midst of agitation for retrenchments, Secretary of War Eaton suggested the abolition of the office of Surgeon General. In a letter to Congress in support of his administration, Lovell was so far successful that he not only saved his own office but obtained an increase in the number of officers in the corps. Societies During the 1820s, Lovell was a member of the prestigious society, Columbian Institute for the Promotion of Arts and Sciences, who counted among their members former presidents Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams and many prominent men of the day, including well-known representatives of the military, government service, medical and other professions. Black Hawk War During Lovell's term of office occurred the Black Hawk War and the beginning of the long continued struggle with the Seminoles of Florida. In 1832, incident to the trouble with the Sacs and Foxes in Illinois and Wisconsin, troops were sent to that section by way of Buffalo and the Great Lakes. Cholera broke out on two boats en route from Buffalo to Chicago. The troops were debarked in the vicinity of Detroit and put into camp. Nearly four hundred cases developed with eighty-eight deaths. The Seminole War began on December 28, 1835, when the Indians, under Osceola, ambushed and destroyed two companies of the 4th Infantry under command of Major Dade. The anxieties incident to furnishing medical service for the troops collecting for the punitive campaign weighed heavily upon Lovell. He established a medical supply depot at Tampa and a general hospital at St. Augustine. He asked for