Congress votes an army hospital into being outside Boston

By late July 1775, thousands of colonial soldiers had been dug in around Boston for three months with no real medical system behind them, only local arrangements and improvised care in place since Lexington and Concord. On July 27, the Second Continental Congress passed legislation establishing the "Army Hospital," creating the office of Director General and Chief Physician to run it. Congress spelled out the staff needed: nurses, a matron to supervise them, and an apothecary to keep the army in medicine. No prior Congress had organized military medicine this way; earlier efforts had been ad hoc…