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
it fell to me to distribute to the patients their letters. I had
been giving letters to well men, had my own pocket full, was
happy myself, and had come from
among men as happy as men ever are; for I have discovered
the secret of happiness to be hidden in
mail-bags. I rushed up the stairs leading to the second story of
the building, the rooms of which are used as part of the
hospital. Two or three doors were before me. I opened the
first, and found myself alone in the presence of a corpse. It
was the body of a man who had died the night before. He lay
in full soldier's dress, decently brushed coat with military
buttons, and with a white cloth covering the face. He was
buried in the afternoon; the regiment drawn up in a hollow
square, solemnly silent, while the service was performed: then
standing reverently while the body and its escort with the
muffled drum moved to the burial. I have heard of the wail of
the fife, but never made it real to myself until then, when
across the parade-ground, down the street, then from the
distance, came the notes of the Dead March.
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
road thither now, by night or day, by storm or sunshine; for,
after the doctor's visits, it is my work to go to the hospital-steward after the medicines and comforts for my sick men.
How many times already have I climbed the steep clay bank of
the parapet, then slid down into the ditch outside!—a hill of
difficulty in bad weather, when one's feet slip from under him
in the slimy soil. The old bar-room of the hotel is now the
hospital-kitchen and head-quarters of the surgeon and
steward. Above the bar is a flaring gilt sign, "Rainbow
Saloon"; and below it, along the shelves which once held the
liquors, are arranged the apothecary stores of the regiment.
The steward is constantly busy,—one of the hardestworked
men in the regiment, I believe; for he prepares pills and
powders by the thousand, and the rattle of his pestle is almost
constant.
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,
where men with fever and dysentery, with agues, and racking,
lung-shattering coughs, lie stretched on mattresses. Here is
one with ghastly fever-light in his eyes; there, one pale and
hollow-checked. Wrapped to the chin in blankets, some are;
some parched with the fire of disease,— their buttons and gay
dress-coats, the finery in which they used to appear at dress-parade, hanging forlornly overhead.
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.