Another change. I am
to leave this hospital to-day, as a Miss P. from Chicago, who had been engaged
for the place, and expected some three weeks since, has just arrived. I have
become really attached to the patients, and on some accounts dislike leaving.
It seems that Miss O. and myself were intended for Chattanooga or other place
farther toward the front, but in consequence of waiting for Miss O., the place
was filled before our arrival. I fear there may not be any other place open for
me. And when I can go in so many hospitals and see sick men suffering from
neglect or want of more help, I shall think it very hard if I cannot do something.
Two other ladies have been sent back, with the assurance that there was no
opening for them.
I have just been
through the tents and introduced Miss P. to the patients. Many are feeling sad,
or appearing and expressing themselves so, that I am going to leave. Received
many warm expressions of gratitude from many for the very little I have been able
to do for them.
In going into one
tent, found one of the nurses just recovering from an attack of lockjaw. When
able to speak, he told me that it had "followed him, like an evil shadow,
for ten long years."
Then followed an
interesting recital of the cause, which was a gun-shot wound in the spine from
the hand of a brother in an encounter with a grizzly bear in the rocky
mountain. He himself ran away from home at the age of twelve, to follow his
brother in a hunting expedition. After the brother had fired, the bear sprang
toward him, and with one stroke of his paw laid the flesh from the bone from
the forehead down one side of his face and arm to the elbow. The ball had only
grazed the spine of the narrator, and seeing his brother in such danger, who
called to him to fire, he did so and fortunately the shot was fatal to bruin.
Their horses bore them to the nearest settlement, and the brother's life was
saved.
This nurse I had
always observed as quiet, efficient, faithful, and a favorite with the
patients.
The sergeant
mentioned last under date of the 17th, overhearing me say that I was to leave
to-day, and that I did not know where I should be stationed, advised me
"not to be going round from one place to another, but to join a regiment,
as I would be in less danger from guerillas."
Northern people, who
think that all Government employees fatten on commissary stores, ought to see
the table which is set at this hospital. It is exceedingly plain; and it sometimes
requires more moral courage than all are very long, capable of exercising, to
inhale the odor of oyster soup, custards, pies, and sweatmeats, which latter
are sometimes prepared for those who are convalescing, but very rarely bless
the palate of those who prepare them, or daily to deal out the jellys, blanc-mange
and canned fruit without ever tasting. An instance of this kind has occurred
here which not only increased our respect for the surgeon, but amused us not a
little.
The usual rations,
such as tough army beef, baker's bread and stale butter, with muddy coffee,
served in brown mugs, has been the diet for so long a time that it has ceased
to be very palatable. To the steward perhaps this was particularly so, and
probably thinking that we had been sufficiently industrious and self-denying to
merit a treat, and as five boxes of canned oysters had just arrived as a
present from the Christian commission, he ordered enough cooked for dinner, in
addition to the usual fare, to give all, from the surgeon in charge to the
servants, a taste.
"It will take
but five cans for us," said the wife of the surgeon-in-charge to me,
"while for the patients a meal, it will require twenty cans."
So she, with the
wife of doctor R., who jointly had charge of the diet kitchen, prepared the
oysters, and at the usual hour, those, with the hungry expectants, appeared in
the dining-room. The soup had been partially served up but no one had time to
taste it, when the surgeon-in-charge walked in and took a seat at the table.
Probably the peculiar odour of the oysters and the ominous hush at the table
warned him to be on the alert for something unusual.
Unusually demure,
certainly, was the manner of the one table waiter, as he proceeded to the
table, with another dish of the forbidden food.
The surgeon might
well have exclaimed with Cæsar, " Veni, vidi, vici,"
for smoothing an instant smile from his features, with a forced sternness he
demanded:
"What have you
there?"
"Oysters,"
meekly responded the servant, who as well as the rest of us, more than
suspected what might be coming.
"Take every one
of those from the table," said he, "and don't let me see anything of
this kind again. There are too many sick boys up at the tents, needing these
things, for us to eat them!"
The oysters were taken
from the table we are quite positive, and furthermore, that that was the last
we ever saw of them.
It was, however,
respectfully suggested to the surgeon by some one that he make it convenient to
dine out at as early a day as possible, and acquaint his wife and the steward
with the fact some time previous. He didn't promise, however, and the oysters
have never since appeared to us.
SOURCE: Elvira J.
Powers, Hospital Pencillings: Being a Diary While in Jefferson General
Hospital, Jeffersonville, Ind., and Others at Nashville, Tennessee, as Matron
and Visitor, pp. 50-3
