December 31, 1862.
I examine from sixty
to eighty men every morning and make prescriptions for those who need them.
Doing this and visiting those in the hospital, usually keeps me busy from
breakfast to dinner; after that my assistants can “see care” ordinarily of
everybody till next morning. My afternoons are almost equally busy in
contriving ways to keep the soldiers from getting sick, improving my hospital,
etc. We have to make everything as we go on. The hospital is the upper floor of
an old cotton gin building. I had the machinery moved and bedsteads made, beds
made and filled with dry, coarse grass that the soldiers brought on their heads
from the plains, and eight sick men were put in last Thursday. It was a hard
day's work, but the men were very sick, and I had all the help that could work
in the building. We have no such thing as pillows or sheets, but we have plenty
of blankets, and the knapsacks answer nicely for pillows. Dr. Hawks had already
got a good fire-place in the room and now everything is as systematic, and
almost as comfortable, as in any hospital. . . . Some of our officers and men
have been off and captured some oxen, and today all hands have been getting
ready for a great barbecue, which we are to have tomorrow. They have killed ten
oxen, which are now being roasted whole over great pits containing live coals
made from burning logs in them.
SOURCE: Proceedings
of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Volume 43, October, 1909—June,1910:
February 1910. p. 339-40
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