What a wonderful
effect the hardships of camp life, with the troubles and cares which they
entail on a surgeon, have had on my health. For many years I have been
dyspeptic. Now I can eat what I please, and go without sleep almost entirely,
and suffer no inconvenience. Last night, at 11 o'clock, after having ate a
piece of hard salt beef for my supper, I "cared for" a pint of rich
ice cream, and feel no inconvenience from it to-day. This would kill an
ordinary civil man. I have to work very hard, but feel it a great comfort to
work amongst the sick without suffering from fatigue, as I have been accustomed
to.
Having received an
order this morning from Gen. Dix to put all my sick into general hospital, and
finding them bitterly opposed, I visited Fort McHenry, saw Gen. D., and
prevailed on him to rescind the order.
I was highly
gratified with what I saw at Fort McHenry. It, being the first equipped fort I
ever saw, was an object of much interest; its numerous cannon, large enough for
a small soldier to sleep in, pointing in all directions overlooking Baltimore
and guarding all the approaches to it. No matter from what direction you come,
you find these monster guns looking right in your face. Low down behind the
walls lie almost innumerable ugly bull-dog-looking mortars, not over two and a
half feet long, loaded with a 20 to 40-pound shells filling them to the very
muzzle, and ready to be vomited forth at the first approach of trouble. There,
too, is the great Dahlgren, stretching its long black neck away beyond the
embrasures, as if looking for an object into which to pour its monster shot and
shell, or its shower of grape and cannister. Its howitzers are there, and its
great Columbiads, into some of which I was strongly tempted to crawl and take a
nap, but a sudden recollection of the history of Jonah reminded me that its
stomach, too, might sicken, and that I might awake in a trip across the mighty
deep on the wings of the wind. I didn't go in. The bright little brass 6, 8,
and 10pounders, on the greater number of which Napoleon said God always smiled
in battles, were conspicuous amongst these great leviathans, and above all, the
newly invented rifle cannon, ready to demolish ships or houses at two to five
miles distance.
Have lost no man yet
from sickness, but I have one who, I fear, will not recover. He is supposed to
be poisoned by a glass of lemonade, bought of a man suspected of being a rebel.
I have succeeded, by
selling a half barrel of flour, and by the approval of a small requisition made
on the commissary, in getting provisions of all kinds to make my little
detachment comfortable.
