This policy did not allow for the reality that the recruitment, supply, training, and deployment of medical personnel took longer than that of combat soldiers. Doctors were to be enlisted at the same time as infantrymen. While government planners had very extensive and detailed plans on paper, their basic policy was not to implement these plans until hostilities broke out. Like most countries, the United States had adopted a policy of organizing and mobilizing base hospitals in times of war. It was not until the Spanish American War that the nation painfully realized its shortcomings in caring for soldiers wounded in battle or felled by disease. During the French and Indian War, the Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Civil War combat commanders could rely on local hospitals augmented by the populace to care for their casualties. Before the Spanish American War the United States had engaged in conflicts on or near her home soil. The medical support of troops fighting on foreign soil is always problematic in military expeditions. Today we think of these facilities primarily as homes for disabled veterans, but they also served as active hospitals in times of conflict on or near home soil. Britain soon followed with the Royal Hospital for Seamen in Greenwich in 1695.
Louis XIV, the Sun King, adopted that idea and constructed the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris in 1676. The concept of a field or base hospital designed exclusively for the support of a military operation was first used by Cardinal Richelieu of France in 1630.
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