University of Virginia Library

12. CHAPTER XII

The practice of an Army doctor in those days was much
like that of his civilian confreres. He treated wounds, injuries,
frostbite and any illness that occurred among the healthy young
men of his post, and cared for the officers' wives and children.
Because he was often the only doctor for miles around, he also
attended anyone in the surrounding region who sent for him. His
practice was a general one. Specialization was just a word to
him, one, indeed, that he rarely heard.

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His life was not easy. The Army was neglected by the coun-
try that thought it was through with wars, and the Medical Corps wads
the step-child of the Army. In posts such as Apache the hospital
was usually a crude building erected by the troops. It was built to
last ten years on the theory, possible only in an age that knew
nothing about bacteriology, that it would by then be too “saturated
with hospital infection” for further use and should be torn
down. An office, a dispensary, a store room and a kitchen were
usually partitioned off in the four corners, and the rest of the room
served as a ward. It was heated by wood-burning stoves and lighted
by candles or coal oil lamps. Such necessities of a modern hospi-
tal as a laboratory, an operating room and running water were un-
dreamed of.

There were no nurses, and the Hospital Corps had not yet
been formed. The sick were cared for by hospital stewards, many of
them men of some education and training who were attached to the
Medical Corps as non-commissioned officers; and by privates, de-
tailed for by their company commander to hospital duty, and not
greatly interested in the work beyond the extra-duty pay.

Reed got along well with the men working under him, and
succeeded in inspiring them with a little of his own devotion to
the art and, as he saw it, privilege, the privilege of healing.
Order and cleanliness were strict rules with him. Lenient with
Anmach's lapses from sobriety, he would not tolerate drinking by
hospital attendants: the welfatre of his patients was at stake.

Usually gracious and pliable, he could be rigid when his
authority was slighted. There was a tendency at that time among
the line officers -the fighting men -the pay scant attention
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to the advice of the Army doctors. The medical officer was in the
unhappy position of being able only to advise on health and sani-
tary matters; he had no enforcement power at all. The Commanding
Officer of thi his post could ignore even his most urgent recommen-
dations. It was a gl galling situation, and one which Reed met with
his customary directness.

On one occasion a soldier still on sick list who was taking
a walk was ordered by to active duty by the Commanding Officer, at
Apache, who remarked that if he was well enough to be strolling
about he was well enough to work. Reed did not waste his time or
temper in a protest to his superior. Instead he sent a letter through
him to headquarters asking if such interference with medical treat-
ment was allowed. The answer, filtering back through official
channels, upheld him. The Commanding Officer, who received it first,
read it and sighed as he handed it to his Adjutant for delivery to
Reed. “Confound the doctors, Mr. Adjutant,” he said. “We can never
get ahead of them.”

He could snare Reed's cook away from him, but he knew better
now than to interfere with his patients! Surgeon General Barnes
had been right when he recognized the young lieutenant as a man who
would defend the dignity of his Corps.

The duty of safeguarding the health of his handful of pa-
tients left Reed time for his favorite hobby, gardening, which he
and his wife enjoyed together. She grew flowers, he, vegetables.
The Army, in the days when little was known about the importance
of fresh vegetables in the diet, made no provision for them in the
daily ration. Even if it had, there would have been no way to ob-
tain them at posts like Apache, except by growing them on the spot.
A soldier threatened with scurvy -a disease caused by lack of
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fresh vegetables and fruit -was ordered to go to the commisary
and get canned tomatoes; and this food at many posts took the place
of fresh vegetables. Reed could not grow enough in his garden
for the whole post, but he did provide the hospital. In the mild
evenings, when his duties for the day were over, he and Mrs. Reed,
trailed by Undina and Anmach, would tour their gardens and make sug-
gestions to their ex-farmer and sometimes do a little planting or
digging or picking themselves.

Nobody worried much about hostile Indians at the post.
The few Coyotero Apaches who, with their women and children, lived
there were peaceable folk, and most of their men were enlisted in
the Army. As long as Geronimo was at large the danger from hos-
tile Indians was real, but it was chiefly confined to the southern
parts of Arizona and New Mexico from which retreat across the Bor-
der, out of reach of the United States troops, was easy. And even
that danger abated for the time, when, in October, 1879, Geronimo,
seeing a cold hard winter ahead, proclaimed that he was tired of
the war-path and wanted to return to San Carlos -where the govern-
ment would take care of his food, clothing and shelter.

The post Indians were fond of games, and the men, in their
free time, could often be found squatting in the shade playing cards,
each with his little scrap of red flannel, which all Apaches wore
for good luck, stuck in hat or belt or buttonhole. The cards, home-
made from horsehide, were marked with crude sketches of men and
animals, and with tods and Apache signs; stakes were a bit of to-
bacco, small coins, a knife, or perhaps a pair of canvas pants.

They were a sturdy people, of great endurance and
strength, who had little sickness. When an Apache became ill the
medicine man, hideously painted, with chanting, incantations and
dancing would set to work to drive out the evil spirit. The In-
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dians at Camp Apache, when an illness did not immediately yield to
this treatment, got in the habit of sending for the white medicine
man.

They liked him and looked on him as a friend. He had saved
the life of the little Indian girl, they knew, and he had named her
Susie and was bringing her up in his own household; and he was
never too busy or tired to come to them when they asked for him.
Reed, on his part, treated them faithfully and was never discour-
aged by the almost certain knowledge that, the moment his back was
turned, the witch doctor, shaking his gourd rattle and whooping
frightfully, would resume his effort to scare the devil out of the
sufferer -who probably needed quiet more than anything else. That
they apprecited his efforts for them, whether or not they thought
them as effective as those of their own medicine man, they made plain
by bringing him presents -a haunch of venison, or a wild turkey, or
a few quail. If no one was in the house to receive it, they would
slip inside and, removing a picture from the wall, hang the game in
its place, or perhaps lay it on Mrs. Reed's dressing table.

It was, in some respects, an ideal life, active, healthy
and busy, and free of financial strain; but it had drawbacks, too,
distressing to Reed's scholarly temperament. In this remote Army
post, seven hundred miles from the nearest railway and six weeks by
mail from the east, he was shut off from the distractions of the
world, but also from its problems and ideas. Medical knowledge, h
he knew, was not static; it was continually pressing against its
frontiers and forcing them back as surely as the ranchers and miners
and farmers were forcing back those of the west. It was a slow
process, but a continuing one, one with which it was hard to keep
up from an isolated garrison in the Arizona mountains.

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Revolutionary new theories were seeping into the medical
journals. Some European doctors were saying that “germs,” tiny
living organisms that could be seen only through a microscope,
were the causes of certain diseases and of the infections that made
even the simplest surgical operation dangerous. Lister himself had
addressed a skeptical audience on antiseptic surgery at the Inter-
national Medical Congress at the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876.
A brother officer, Captain A. C. Girard of the Medical Corps, had
been abroad in 1877 and, convinced of the value of Lister's tech-
nique, had sent the Surgeon General a full report of it. Barnes,
somewhat impressed, had published it to the Corps in August, 1877, and
more than a year later had made available to any post surgeons who
asked for it “Weir's Antiseptic Spray Apparatus,” with antiseptic
dressings. The new scientific medicicne medicine was barely launched,
but it was beginning to make headway.

Reed, scanning the few and belated medical journals that
penetrated his wilderness, noticed and wondered about the daring
new theories. Meanwhile, he faithfully attended to his post duties -
sick call, inspection, hospital calls, professional visits out-
side -practiced with increasing skill and knowledge, and cultivated
his garden.

* * *

Modestly, because there was a lady present, the corporal
stepped behind one of the supply wagons to take off his red flan-
nel undershirt. He emerged in a moment holding it in his hand,
his uniform jacket beuttoned over his bare chest.

“Now,” Dr. Reed directed him, “cut off a limb and tie
your shirt to it by the armys. As soon as the train comes in sight,
start waving it.” The corporal saluted and withdrew.

134.

The paired steel ribbons before him stretched two thousand
miles eastward, a thousand westward. Behind lay more than seven
hundred miles of the roughest and loneliest country left in the
United States. Reed, his three years of frontier duty finished,
had been ordered to travel north from Camp Apache until he picked
up the Union Pacific tracks west of Cheyenne. He was to flag the
first train and identify himself to the engineer. The engineer
on his next trip would bring out the doctor who was to return
to Camp Apache in Reed's place with the wagon train; whileand Reed
and his family, in the expensive discomfort that distinguished
railway travel in the early days, would return to civilization.

It sounded easy, but they had been twenty-seven days on
their way -twenty-seven days over trackless territory unmarked by
a single settlement. The ambulandce and the four escort wagons -one
with feed for the mules, one with the soldiers' baggage and provis-
ions, two with the furniture they were able to bring out -had had
to break their own trail. It was like all the rest of his wagon
trips, only longer and tougher. Just as well that Lawrence, now a
robust two year old, was a good soldier like his mother, Reed thought.

Lawrence's mother stepped out of the doherty wagon to join
her husband who was thoughtfully heating a cup of shaving water by
the camp fire.

“Lawrence is asleep, I'm glad to say,” she reported, “and
so is Susie.” They were bringing the Indian girl back to civiliza-
tion with them to train her, on government orders, as a household
servant.

Reed turned to her with a rapt expression. His blue eyes
had the look of one who sees a lovely vision. “A hot bath,” he said
reverently. “Just think! A hot bath all over!”

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The soldier by the track shouted and began to wave his
improvised flag in wide arcs. (1)

136.