105. In the Hospital
By JAMES KENDALL HOSMER (1863)
The Romance of the Civil War | ||
105. In the Hospital
By JAMES KENDALL HOSMER (1863)
My first visit to the hospital put me face to face with its
gloomiest spectacles. A mail had come, and
IN THE HOSPITAL.
[Description: Illustration of a Civil War hospital with wounded and convalescing men]
In the next room to the one in which lay the corpse, the floor was covered with pale, sick men. Now they have rough bedsteads or bunks; but then there was nothing but the mattress under them, and sometimes only the blankets. One or two attendants, as many as could be spared from the regiment, had the care of the whole; but they were far too few. One poor man was in a sad way, with inflammatory rheumatism, which made it very painful for him to stir;— crouching, wrapped up in blankets over the fire, or stretched out on a floor. God pity the world if it has sights in it more melancholy than a military hospital!
The hospital of our regiment is only in part located in these rooms, of which I have been writing. Most of the patients (I am sorry to write, they are very numerous) are in a larger building, once a hotel, which lies a few rods outside the lines. Well do I know the
In the rooms above lie the sick men, and in one apartment the surgeon is quartered. Every morning, just at light, "surgeon's call"is beaten; and from each company a sergeant marches off at the head of a long line of sick men to be prescribed for. These men are unwell, but not so badly off as to be obliged to leave their ordinary quarters for the accommodations of the hospital.
Let us go up stairs into this second story. At the head of the staircase, the door of a room is ajar; and I see the bed on which generally is lying one of the sickest patients of the hospital, some man near to death,— a comfortable, canopied bed, a death-bed for numbers. To-night, poor Paine, of our company, who died a little while ago, has just been laid out there. An entry runs north and south, from which, on each side, open the doers of other sick-rooms,
The nurses, too, looked jaded and worn: and no wonder; for, with a dismal contagion, the torpor and weariness in the faces about will communicate itself to the attendants and visitors, and the most cheerful countenance can hardly help becoming forlorn. Our chaplain and colonel (both good, energetic, and useful men) make it part of their daily duty to go to every couch, and befriend the poor fellows lying there; and their visits are the golden hours of the day at the hospital,—waited and prayed for. The doctor's apartment is large. In one corner are piled up the "stretchers,"the cots with handles, which are meant to carry wounded men off the field. At daybreak, each day, this room is filled with the procession which answers the surgeon's call.
Now I am a nurse in the hospital; though in the room, my " ward,"I have only two patients, and can make things more comfortable than in most of the rooms. Only two patients: but they both have this terrible fever; and I fear (God knows how much!) for this young brother. Yet I must veil my apprehension. To-night, a letter must be sent North. My heart is sinking; but I must counterfeit light, heartedness, lest they take alarm.
105. In the Hospital
By JAMES KENDALL HOSMER (1863)
The Romance of the Civil War | ||