TRY TO GET UP A SOCIETY AND GET SICK.
After two days in bed at home, I was so much better, that when Mrs.
Ingersol came with a plan for organizing a society to furnish the army
with female nurses, I went to see Mrs. Lincoln about it. She was willing
to cooperate, and I went to Secretary Stanton, who heard me, and
replied:
"You must know that Mrs. Barlow and Mrs. Ingersol and you are not fair
representatives of your sex," and went on to explain the embarrassment
of the Surgeon-General from the thousands of women pressing their
services upon the Government, and the various political influences
brought to bear on behalf of applicants, and of the well grounded
opposition of surgeons to the presence of women in hospitals, on account
of their general unfitness. Gen. Scott, as a personal friend of Miss
Dix, had appointed her to the place she held, and it was so convenient
and respectful to refer people to her, that the War Department would not
interfere with the arrangement. In other words, she was a break-water
against which feminine sympathies could dash and splash without
submerging the hospital service.
After what I had seen among the women who had succeeded in getting in, I
had not much to say. A society might prescribe a dress, but might be no
more successful than Miss Dix in making selections of those who should
wear it.
I asked the Secretary how it came that no better provision had been
made for our wounded after the battle of the Wilderness, and tears
sprang to his eyes as he replied:
"We did not know where they were. We had made every arrangement at the
points designated by Gen. Grant, but he changed his plans and did not
notify us. The whole army was cut off from its base of supplies and must
be sustained. As soon as we knew the emergency, we did everything in our
power; but all our preparations were lost. Everything had to be done
over again. You cannot regret the suffering more than I, but it was
impossible for me to prevent it."
I never saw him so earnest, so sorrowful, so deeply moved.
That effort seemed to be the straw which broke the camel's back, and I
was so ill as to demand medical attendance. For this I sent to Campbell.
Dr. Kelly came, but his forte was surgery, and my case was left with Dr.
True, who had had longer practice in medicine. They both decided that I
had been inoculated with gangrene while dressing wounds, and for some
weeks I continued to sink. I began to think my illness fatal, and asked
the doctor, who said:
"I have been thinking I ought to tell you that if you have any unsettled
business you should attend to it."
I had a feeling of being generally distributed over the bed, of being a
mass of pulp without any central force, but I had had a letter that day
from my daughter, who was with her father and grandmother in Swissvale,
and wanted to come to me, and the thought came: "Does God mean to make
my child an orphan, that others may receive their children by my
death?" Then I had a strange sensation of a muster, a gathering of
scattered life-force, and when it all came together it made a protest; I
signed to the doctor, who put his ear to my lips, and I said:
"Doctor True, I shall live to be an hundred and twenty years old!"
He took up the lamp, threw the light on my face, and peered anxiously
into it, and I looked straight into his eyes, and said:
"I will!"
He laughed and set down the lamp, saying:
"Then you must get over this!"
"You must get me over it. Bring Dr. Kelly!"
Next morning, I had them carry me into a larger room, where the morning
sun shone on me, and ten days after, started for Pennsylvania, where I
spent three weeks with my old Swissvale neighbors, Col. Hawkins and Wm.
S. Haven.
When I returned to Washington, I found an official document, a
recommendation from the Quarter-Master General, of my dismissal for
absence without leave. It was addressed to Secretary Stanton, who had
written on the outside:
"Respectfully referred to Mrs. Swisshelm, by Edwin M. Stanton."
I went back to work, and learned that Mrs. Gen. Barlow had died of
typhoid fever, in Washington. No man died more directly for the
Government. Thousands who fell on the battle-field, exhibited less
courage and devotion to that service, and did less to secure its
success. I know not where her body lies, but wherever it does, no
decoration-day should pass in which her memory is not crowned with
immortelles.
She died at a time when my life was despaired of, and when Mrs. Ingersol
wrote to a Maine paper of my illness, adding:
"I hope the Lord will not take her away, until He has made another like
her."
She told me afterwards that just then she held the world at a grudge;
but it must have been relieved of my presence long ere this, if I had
not found in homoepathy relief from pain, which for eight months made
life a burden, and for which the best old-school physicians proposed no
cure.