. . . has just been issued in a neat pamphlet. Of the whole Iowa force in the field 2,000 are
on the sick list, with an average of 80 sick to each regiment, and this is
deemed below the actual average. The
report pertinently says:
The U. S. Commission keeps “a reserve stock” at Washington ‘for
special emergencies such as a general engagement or an epidemic.’ The Western division of the army is exposed
to the one of these, if not the other.
When a battle on the Potomac was first expected – and there might be at
any moment five or ten thousand soldiers requiring instant shelter and
treatment, and in case of victory, as many wounded rebels besides, for whom the
Government would be bound to provide with tenderness and humanity – ‘there was
not at Washington a reserve of hospital stores or unoccupied beds for three
hundred additional patients.’ We are in
a similar case at St. Louis now, and St. Louis sustains the same relation to
our Western army that Washington does to the Eastern. We ought to collect a reserve of hospital
stores at St. Louis. Where shall they be
had? The long delay to strike has been
favorable to sanitary precautions and preparations but deplorably unfavorable
to the health of the soldier himself, and it has given us no such gain on
actual sickness and suffering as fits us to meet great and sudden
increase. ‘In some modern battles
one-third the whole number has been wounded.’
It would take us a long time at the present rate of supply to accumulate
hospital stores for even three thousand sick and wounded Iowa soldiers.
– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye,
Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, February 8, 1862, p. 2
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