“SICK CALL,” AND THE SCENES THAT ACCOMPANIED IT--MUSTERING THE LAME,
HALT AND DISEASED AT THE SOUTH GATE--AN UNUSUALLY BAD CASE--GOING OUT
TO THE HOSPITAL--ACCOMMODATION AND TREATMENT OF THE PATIENTS THERE--THE
HORRIBLE SUFFERING IN THE GANGRENE WARD--BUNGLING AMPUTATIONS
BY BLUNDERING PRACTITIONERS--AFFECTION BETWEEN A SAILOR AND HIS
WARD--DEATH OF MY COMRADE.
Every morning after roll-call, thousands of sick gathered at the South
Gate, where the doctors made some pretense of affording medical relief.
The scene there reminded me of the illustrations in my Sunday-School
lessons of that time when “great multitudes came unto Him,” by the
shores of the Sea of Galilee, “having with them those that were
lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others.” Had the crowds worn the
flouting robes of the East, the picture would have lacked nothing
but the presence of the Son of Man to make it complete. Here were
the burning sands and parching sun; hither came scores of groups of
three or four comrades, laboriously staggering under the weight of a
blanket in which they had carried a disabled and dying friend from some
distant part of the Stockade. Beside them hobbled the scorbutics with
swollen and distorted limbs, each more loathsome and nearer death than
the lepers whom Christ’s divine touch made whole. Dozens, unable to
walk, and having no comrades to carry them, crawled painfully along,
with frequent stops, on their hands and knees. Every form of intense
physical suffering that it is possible for disease to induce in the
human frame was visible at these daily parades of the sick of the
prison. As over three thousand (three thousand and seventy-six) died
in August, there were probably twelve thousand dangerously sick at any
given time daring the month; and a large part of these collected at the
South Gate every morning.
Measurably-calloused as we had become by the daily sights of horror
around us, we encountered spectacles in these gatherings which
no amount of visible misery could accustom us to. I remember one
especially that burned itself deeply into my memory. It was of a young
man not over twenty-five, who a few weeks ago--his clothes looked
comparatively new --had evidently been the picture of manly beauty
and youthful vigor. He had had a well-knit, lithe form; dark curling
hair fell over a forehead which had once been fair, and his eyes still
showed that they had gleamed with a bold, adventurous spirit. The red
clover leaf on his cap showed that he belonged to the First Division of
the Second Corps, the three chevrons on his arm that he was a Sergeant,
and the stripe at his cuff that he was a veteran. Some kind-hearted
boys had found him in a miserable condition on the North Side, and
carried him over in a blanket to where the doctors could see him. He
had but little clothing on, save his blouse and cap. Ulcers of some
kind had formed in his abdomen, and these were now masses of squirming
worms. It was so much worse than the usual forms of suffering, that
quite a little crowd of compassionate spectators gathered around and
expressed their pity. The sufferer turned to one who lay beside him
with:
“Comrade: If we were only under the old Stars and Stripes, we wouldn’t
care a G-d d--n for a few worms, would we?”
This was not profane. It was an utterance from the depths of a brave
man’s heart, couched in the strongest language at his command. It
seemed terrible that so gallant a soul should depart from earth in this
miserable fashion. Some of us, much moved by the sight, went to the
doctors and put the case as strongly as possible, begging them to do
something to alleviate his suffering. They declined to see the case,
but got rid of us by giving us a bottle of turpentine, with directions
to pour it upon the ulcers to kill the maggots. We did so. It must have
been cruel torture, and as absurd remedially as cruel, but our hero set
his teeth and endured, without a groan. He was then carried out to the
hospital to die.
I said the doctors made a pretense of affording medical relief. It was
hardly that, since about all the prescription for those inside the
Stockade consisted in giving a handful of sumach berries to each of
those complaining of scurvy. The berries might have done some good, had
there been enough of them, and had their action been assisted by proper
food. As it was, they were probably nearly, if not wholly, useless.
Nothing was given to arrest the ravages of dysentery.
A limited number of the worst cases were admitted to the Hospital
each day. As this only had capacity for about one-quarter of the sick
in the Stockade, new patients could only be admitted as others died.
It seemed, anyway, like signing a man’s death warrant to send him to
the Hospital, as three out of every four who went out there died. The
following from the official report of the Hospital shows this:
Total number admitted .........................................12,900
Died ................................................. 8,663
Exchanged ............................................ 828
Took the oath of allegiance .......................... 25
Sent elsewhere ....................................... 2,889
Total ................................................12,400
Average deaths, 76 per cent.
Early in August I made a successful effort to get out to the Hospital.
I had several reasons for this: First, one of my chums, W. W. Watts,
of my own company, had been sent out a little whale before very sick
with scurvy and pneumonia, and I wanted to see if I could do anything
for him, if he still lived: I have mentioned before that for awhile
after our entrance into Andersonville five of us slept on one overcoat
and covered ourselves with one blanket. Two of these had already died,
leaving as possessors of-the blanket and overcoat, W. W. Watts, B. B.
Andrews, and myself.
Next, I wanted to go out to see if there was any prospect of escape. I
had long since given up hopes of escaping from the Stockade. All our
attempts at tunneling had resulted in dead failures, and now, to make
us wholly despair of success in that direction, another Stockade was
built clear around the prison, at a distance of one hundred and twenty
feet from the first palisades. It was manifest that though we might
succeed in tunneling past one Stockade, we could not go beyond the
second one.
I had the scurvy rather badly, and being naturally slight in frame, I
presented a very sick appearance to the physicians, and was passed out
to the Hospital.
While this was a wretched affair, it was still a vast improvement on
the Stockade. About five acres of ground, a little southeast of the
Stockade, and bordering on a creek, were enclosed by a board fence,
around which the guard walked, trees shaded the ground tolerably well.
There were tents and flies to shelter part of the sick, and in these
were beds made of pine leaves. There were regular streets and alleys
running through the grounds, and as the management was in the hands
of our own men, the place was kept reasonably clean and orderly for
Andersonville.
There was also some improvement in the food. Rice in some degree
replaced the nauseous and innutritious corn bread, and if served in
sufficient quantities, would doubtless have promoted the recovery
of many men dying from dysenteric diseases. We also received small
quantities of “okra,” a plant peculiar to the South, whose pods
contained a mucilaginous matter that made a soup very grateful to those
suffering from scurvy.
But all these ameliorations of condition were too slight to even arrest
the progress of the disease of the thousands of dying men brought out
from the Stockade. These still wore the same lice-infested garments as
in prison; no baths or even ordinary applications of soap and water
cleaned their dirt-grimed skins, to give their pores an opportunity
to assist in restoring them to health; even their long, lank and
matted hair, swarming with vermin, was not trimmed. The most ordinary
and obvious measures for their comfort and care were neglected. If a
man recovered he did it almost in spite of fate. The medicines given
were scanty and crude. The principal remedial agent--as far as my
observation extended--was a rank, fetid species of unrectified spirits,
which, I was told, was made from sorgum seed. It had a light-green
tinge, and was about as inviting to the taste as spirits of turpentine.
It was given to the sick in small quantities mixed with water. I had
had some experience with Kentucky “apple-jack,” which, it was popularly
believed among the boys, would dissolve a piece of the fattest pork
thrown into it, but that seemed balmy and oily alongside of this.
After tasting some, I ceased to wonder at the atrocities of Wirz and
his associates. Nothing would seem too bad to a man who made that his
habitual tipple.
[For a more particular description of the Hospital I must refer my
reader to the testimony of Professor Jones, in a previous chapter.]
Certainly this continent has never seen--and I fervently trust it
will never again see--such a gigantic concentration of misery as that
Hospital displayed daily. The official statistics tell the story of
this with terrible brevity: There were three thousand seven hundred
and nine in the Hospital in August; one thousand four hundred and
eighty-nine--nearly every other man died. The rate afterwards became
much higher than this.
The most conspicuous suffering was in the gangrene wards. Horrible
sores spreading almost visibly from hour to hour, devoured men’s limbs
and bodies. I remember one ward in which the alterations appeared to be
altogether in the back, where they ate out the tissue between the skin
and the ribs. The attendants seemed trying to arrest the progress of
the sloughing by drenching the sores with a solution of blue vitriol.
This was exquisitely painful, and in the morning, when the drenching
was going on, the whole hospital rang with the most agonizing screams.
But the gangrene mostly attacked the legs and arms, and the led more
than the arms. Sometimes it killed men inside of a week; sometimes they
lingered on indefinitely. I remember one man in the Stockade who cut
his hand with the sharp corner of a card of corn bread he was lifting
from the ration wagon; gangrene set in immediately, and he died four
days after.
One form that was quit prevalent was a cancer of the lower one corner
of the mouth, and it finally ate the whole side of the face out. Of
course the sufferer had the greatest trouble in eating and drinking.
For the latter it was customary to whittle out a little wooden tube,
and fasten it in a tin cup, through which he could suck up the water.
As this mouth cancer seemed contagious, none of us would allow any one
afflicted with it to use any of our cooking utensils. The Rebel doctors
at the hospital resorted to wholesale amputations to check the progress
of the gangrene.
They had a two hours session of limb-lopping every morning, each of
which resulted in quite a pile of severed members. I presume more
bungling operations are rarely seen outside of Russian or Turkish
hospitals. Their unskilfulness was apparent even to non-scientific
observers like myself. The standard of medical education in the
South--as indeed of every other form of education--was quite low. The
Chief Surgeon of the prison, Dr. Isaiah White, and perhaps two or three
others, seemed to be gentlemen of fair abilities and attainments. The
remainder were of that class of illiterate and unlearning quacks who
physic and blister the poor whites and negros in the country districts
of the South; who believe they can stop bleeding of the nose by
repeating a verse from the Bible; who think that if in gathering their
favorite remedy of boneset they cut the stem upwards it will purge
their patients, and if downward it will vomit them, and who hold that
there is nothing so good for “fits” as a black cat, killed in the dark
of the moon, cut open, and bound while yet warm, upon the naked chest
of the victim of the convulsions.
They had a case of instruments captured from some of our field
hospitals, which were dull and fearfully out of order. With poor
instruments and unskilled hands the operations became mangling.
In the Hospital I saw an admirable illustration of the affection
which a sailor will lavish on a ship’s boy, whom he takes a fancy to,
and makes his “chicken,” as the phrase is. The United States sloop
“Water Witch” had recently been captured in Ossabaw Sound, and her
crew brought into prison. One of her boys--a bright, handsome little
fellow of about fifteen--had lost one of his arms in the fight. He
was brought into the Hospital, and the old fellow whose “chicken” he
was, was allowed to accompany and nurse him. This “old barnacle-back”
was as surly a growler as ever went aloft, but to his “chicken” he
was as tender and thoughtful as a woman. They found a shady nook in
one corner, and any moment one looked in that direction he could see
the old tar hard at work at something for the comfort and pleasure
of his pet. Now he was dressing the wound as deftly and gently as a
mother caring for a new-born babe; now he was trying to concoct some
relish out of the slender materials he could beg or steal from the
Quartermaster; now trying to arrange the shade of the bed of pine
leaves in a more comfortable manner; now repairing or washing his
clothes, and so on.
All the sailors were particularly favored by being allowed to bring
their bags in untouched by the guards. This “chicken” had a wonderful
supply of clothes, the handiwork of his protector who, like most good
sailors, was very skillful with the needle. He had suits of fine white
duck, embroidered with blue in a way that would ravish the heart of a
fine lady, and blue suits similarly embroidered with white. No belle
ever kept her clothes in better order than these were. When the duck
came up from the old sailor’s patient washing it was as spotless as
new-fallen snow.
I found my chum in a very bad condition. His appetite was entirely
gone, but he had an inordinate craving for tobacco--for strong, black
plug --which he smoked in a pipe. He had already traded off all his
brass buttons to the guards for this. I had accumulated a few buttons
to bribe the guard to take me out for wood, and I gave these also
for tobacco for him. When I awoke one morning the man who laid next
to me on the right was dead, having died sometime during the night.
I searched his pockets and took what was in them. These were a silk
pocket handkerchief, a gutta percha finger-ring, a comb, a pencil, and
a leather pocket-book, making in all quite a nice little “find.” I hied
over to the guard, and succeeded in trading the personal estate which
I had inherited from the intestate deceased, for a handful of peaches,
a handful of hardly ripe figs, and a long plug of tobacco. I hastened
back to Watts, expecting that the figs and peaches would do him a world
of good. At first I did not show him the tobacco, as I was strongly
opposed to his using it, thinking that it was making him much worse.
But he looked at the tempting peaches and figs with lack-luster eyes;
he was too far gone to care for them. He pushed them back to me, saying
faintly:
“No, you take ’em, Mc; I don’t want ’em; I can’t eat ’em!”
I then produced the tobacco, and his face lighted up. Concluding that
this was all the comfort that he could have, and that I might as well
gratify him, I cut up some of the weed, filled his pipe and lighted it.
He smoked calmly and almost happily all the afternoon, hardly speaking
a word to me. As it grew dark he asked me to bring him a drink. I did
so, and as I raised him up he said:
“Mc, this thing’s ended. Tell my father that I stood it as long as I
could, and----”
The death rattle sounded in his throat, and when I laid him back it was
all over. Straightening out his limbs, folding his hands across his
breast, and composing his features as best I could, I lay, down beside
the body and slept till morning, when I did what little else I could
toward preparing for the grave all that was left of my long-suffering
little friend.