 | Memoranda During the War |  |
Army Surgeons — Aid deficiencies.
— I must bear my most emphatic testimony to the zeal, manliness, and professional spirit and capacity, generally prevailing among the Surgeons, many them young men, in the Hospitals and the army. I will not say much about the exceptions, for they are few; (but I have met some of those few, and very incompetent and airish they were.) I never ceas'd to find the best young men, and the hardest and most disinterested workers, among
There are, however, serious deficiencies, wastes, sad want of system, &c., in the Commissions, contributions, and in all the Voluntary, and a great part of the Governmental, nursing, edibles, medicines, stores, &c. (I do not say surgical attendance, because the Surgeons cannot do more than human endurance permits.) Whatever puffing accounts there may be in the papers of the North, this is the actual fact. No thorough previous preparation, no system, no foresight, no genius. Always plenty of stores, no doubt, but always miles away; never where they are needed, and never the proper application. Of all harrowing experiences, none is greater than that of the days following a heavy battle. Scores, hundreds of the noblest young men on earth, uncomplaining, lie, helpless, mangled, faint, alone, and so bleed to death, or die from exhaustion, either actually untouch'd at all, or merely the laying of them down and leaving them, when there ought to be means provided to save them.
| Memoranda During the War | |