In Catholic countries we observe the hospitals attended by nuns, sisters of mercy and charity, all eager to labor in behalf of humanity. Besides these, the deaconesses of the Rhine and the beguines of Flanders have acquired an imperishable record in history for their philanthropic efforts. “There is nothing,” says Voltaire, “nobler than the sight of delicate females sacrificing beauty, youth, often wealth and rank, to devote themselves to the relief of human miseries under the most revolting forms.” We have seen in our own time, in the hospitals of the Federal armies, a devoted band of self-sacrificing women striving to perform their part in the great work of philanthropy. Here woman never appeared. There were, in reality, only the vivid impressions of horror, complaints, groans, delirium, and the agony of death.
More than eight thousand of our men perished miserably in this neglected and iniquitous spot.
Men were seen here in all stages of idiocy and imbecility from the effects of starvation. They were seen asking for bones to gnaw to relieve the pangs of hunger. Compassion never will believe that this request was made by dying mortals, and that too in a hospital, which is regarded among men as the holy institution of society, and even by infuriated combatants as the only sacred precinct on the brutal fields of war.
The same wail of distress was heard on the plains of Texas, and along the military lines of Virginia.
Thus the black flag, threatened by the rebel cabinet, was hoisted. Without the courage to proclaim their intentions openly and boldly upon the battle-field, they exhibited them in as sure, but different form, in the management of their prisons.
VII.
The stories relating to vaccination with poisonous matter are doubtless untrue. That there were disastrous effects from vaccination is probably correct, but they must have been the results of accident. Similar consequences have been observed in civil communities, in armies, and in hospitals. Serious results have been noticed by the writer in our own armies and hospitals.
Vaccine matter is extremely liable to decomposition; and when heated, even by the warmth of the body, fermentation arises, and by catalytic action putrefaction results, forming a positive poison. That the directors of this hospital should resort to such means for the destruction of human life is not at all probable, for the process required labor: and besides, the wretched invalids died with sufficient rapidity without the intervention of this new art of malice.
VIII.
In all military hospitals, food is to be regarded as the principal medicament. With good food, the results of surgery may be foretold with tolerable certainty, and the obstructions to the medical treatment lessen greatly or disappear. Without the aid of pure, healthful, life-giving aliment, the duration of animal life is always brief when exposed to vicious and hostile influences.