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2. The committee are convinced by the testimony of the Medical Bureau itself, and the evidence of the most distinguished Army officers, including the Commander-in-Chief, Adjutant General Thomas, and the acting Surgeon General, that the cooking of the volunteer and new regiments in general is destined to be of the most crude and perilous description, and that no preventive measure could be so effectual in preserving health and keeping off disease as an order of the Department requiring a skilled cook to be enlisted in each company of the regiments. The Woman's Central Association, in connection with the Medical Boards, are prepared to assume the duty of collecting, registering, and instructing a body of cooks, if the Department will pass such an order, accompanying it with the allotment of such wages as are equitable.

3. The committee represent that the Woman's Central Association of Relief have selected, and are selecting, out of several hundred women, suited in all respects to become nurses in the General Hospitals of the Army. These women, the distinguished physicians and surgeons of the various hospitals in New York, have undertaken to educate and drill in a most thorough and laborious manner; and the committee ask that the War Department consent to receive on wages, these nurses, in such numbers as the exigences of the campaign may require. It is not so proposed the nurses should advance to the seat of war, until directly called for by the Medical Bureau here, or that the Government should be at any expense until they are actually in service.

4. The committee ask that the Secretary of War issue an order that in case of need, the Medical Bureau may call to the aid of the regular medical force a set of volunteer dressers, composed of young medical men, drilled for this purpose by the hospital physicians and surgeons of New York, giving them such subsistence and such recognition as the rules of the service may allow under a generous construction.

It is believed that a Commission would bring these and other matters of great interest and importance to the health of the troops into the shape of easy and practical adoption. But if no Commission is appointed, the committee pray that the Secretary will order the several suggestions made to be carried into immediate effect, if consistent with the laws of the Department, or possible without the action of Congress.

Feeling themselves directly, to represent large and important constituencies, and indirectly, a wide-spread and commanding public sentiment, the committee would most respectfully urge the immediate attention of the Secretary to the objects of their prayer.

Very respectfully,

HENRY W. BELLOWS, D.D.
W. H. VAN BUREN, M.D. D.
ELISHA HARRIS, M.D..
J. HARSEN, M.D.

WASHINGTON, May 18, 1861.