Hospital Transports. Frederick Law Olmsted
nurses, and ten surgical dressers (medical students). I got them all on the Small, and having succeeded in obtaining the more important supplies in limited quantities, at noon left for Yorktown. On reaching here we found the "stern-wheelers" again along-side, and over three hundred patients on board; many very sick indeed, some delirious, some comatose, some fairly in articulo. The assistant surgeons, left behind at the abandoned camps, are too anxious to be rid of them, so as to move with their regiments, and have surgery of war. And as their orders authorize it, they hurry them off to us in this style, after a day's ride in army wagons, without springs, over such a country without roads as I described last week. They were horribly filthy, and there was no time to clean them, often not to undress them, as, sick and fainting, they were lifted on board.
About noon the next day I completed a hospital organization of such forces as I had, dividing the cabins and the upper steerage of the ship into five wards, for the bad cases, each ward having one surgeon, two ward-masters, and four nurses—the two latter classes in watches; besides these, some assistant nurses and servants, convalescent soldiers, and contrabands. In these wards only the very sick—chiefly cases of typhoid fever—were taken. By cutting away bulkheads, and getting wind-sails rigged, they were fairly well ventilated. I had to offer $200 for the repair of damages before this could be secured, however. All the rest of the ship was the sixth ward, in which the hernias, rheumatisms, bronchitises, lame and worn-out men were placed, organized in squads of fifty each, with a squad-master to draw their rations of house-diet.
To get proper food for all, decently cooked and distributed, has given me more concern than anything else. The ship servants are brutes, and our supply of utensils was cruelly short. Fortunately the Captain is a good-hearted and resolute man, and the ladies—God knows what we should have done without them!—have contrived to make some chafing-dishes with which the kitchen is pieced out wonderfully. Just think of it for a moment. Here were one hundred miserably sick and dying men, forced upon us before we had been an hour on board; and tug after tug swarming round the great ship, before we had a nail out of a box, and when there were but ten pounds of Indian meal and two spoons to feed them with. No account could do justice to the faithful industry of the medical students and young men: how we all got through with it, I hardly know; but one idea is distinct—that every man had a good place to sleep in, and something hot to eat daily, and that the sickest had every essential that could have been given them in their own homes. …
B. was all this time driving everything to obtain supplies, while the sick kept coming faster than we could get anything ready for them. The last thing essential was more beef. B. at length got hold of a couple of draught cattle of Franklin's division, left behind in their advance by steamboats, and while these were being killed and dressed, we filled up to nine hundred patients.
To avoid having more pushed on board, I had the Captain heave short; so the moment that B.'s boat came, and the beef could be hoisted up, the steamer was under way, and before night, no doubt, was well out to sea.
I then went on board the Small to drop down, quite ill for the time from want of sleep and from fatigue. A few hours' rest and a quiet dinner brought me all right, however, and at sunset I set out with B. to look after the sick ashore.
One of the strange effects, upon all concerned as workers on these hospital ships, in the heart of all misery and pain, and part of it, seems to have been the quieting of all excitement of feeling and of expression—a sort of apparent stoicism granted for the occasion. A slight illustration of this quietness, which was characteristic of most of the hospital party, is given in the following passage from a letter of one of the ladies on the Ocean Queen:—
"It seems a strange thing that the sight of such misery, such death in life, should have been accepted by us all so quietly as it was. We were simply eyes and hands for those three days. Great, strong men were dying about us; in nearly every ward some one was going. Yesterday one of the students called me to go with him and say whether I had taken the name of a dead man in the forward cabin the day he came in. He was a strong, handsome fellow, raving mad when brought in, and lying now, the day after, with pink cheeks and peaceful look. I had tried to get his name, and once he seemed to understand, and screeched out at the top of his voice, 'John H. Miller,' but whether it was his own name or that of some friend he wanted, I don't know; we could not find out. All the record I had of him was from my diet-list: 'Miller—forward cabin, port side, number 119. Beef-tea and punch.'
"Last night Dr. Ware came to me to know how much floor-room we had. The immense saloon of the aft cabin was filled with mattresses so thickly placed that there was hardly stepping-room between them, and as I swung my lantern along the rows of pale faces, it showed me another strong man dead. N. had been working hard over him, but it was useless. He opened his eyes when she called 'Henry' clearly in his ear, and gave her a chance to pour brandy down his throat; but all did no good; he died quietly while she was helping some one else, and my lantern showed him gone. We are changed by all this contact with terror, else how could I deliberately turn my lantern on his face, and say to the doctor behind me, 'Is that man dead?' and then stand coolly while he examined him, listened, and pronounced him 'dead.' I could not have quietly said a year ago, 'That will make one more bed, then, Doctor.' Sick men were waiting on deck in the cold, though, and every few feet of cabin floor were precious. So they took the dead man out, and put him to sleep in his coffin on deck. We had to climb over another soldier lying up there quiet as he, to get at the blankets to keep the living warm."
The business of feeding men by hundreds at short notice, in confined spaces, and with the aid of very limited cooking facilities, is one which can hardly be appreciated by those who have only heard, not seen, how it is accomplished. It takes good heads as well as good hearts, strong will as well as strong limbs, to avoid ruinous confusion. After a battle, when men are brought in so rapidly that they have to be piled in almost without reference to their being human beings, and every one raving for drink first and then for nourishment, it requires strong nerves to be able to attend to them properly. Habit and system are the two great aids—or rather system first of all, if possible; though system in such cases grows out of experience. Happily system has ruled in the work of the Sanitary Commission, and such success as has attended its operations is chiefly due to this, as every one must have observed who had an opportunity to witness the difference between its doings and those having the same end in view, but carried on without well-studied or sufficiently comprehensive plans.
But in these Atlantic Floating Hospitals the difficulties were very great. The desideratum is a practicable diet, simple yet nourishing, abundant and not injurious; always ready, yet varied enough to avoid the danger of satiety, which is ever threatening the sick man, whose chance of recovery may hang on his ability to eat his food with relish. In this arduous part of the Hospital Transport duty, the ladies were able to be especially useful; their sympathy and good judgment coming constantly in play, and the supply of fruits, jellies, and a variety of delicacies being generally so liberal as to afford full scope to their powers. But in dealing with hundreds and thousands of men, many of whom are not particularly in danger, but yet obliged to lie in beds for wounds to heal, it is necessary to provide on a scale so large as puts mere delicacies, or the ordinary resources of the sick-room, quite out of the question. It is utterly futile to attempt treating each one of four or five hundred patients as if we had him alone in a private family; and patients, as well as nurses and friends, must learn this after very little experience. But it is practicable here, as elsewhere, to accomplish much that is beneficial and comfortable by judicious system firmly carried out. To avoid collisions, and vain attempts to perform impossibilities, after a short experience, but careful study of what was really needed, rules were established which proved in practice nearly perfect in the matter of preventing delay and disappointment, while the result satisfied the patients in general quite as well as we can hope to satisfy sick men who have fitful appetites. As the suggestion may prove applicable to other cases, the established routine is given in full in the Appendix (B.)
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