JACKSONVILLE, FLA.
At Jacksonville, Fla., the work at the camp was under the direction of the Rev. Alexander Kent, of Washington, D.C., who has been a member of the American National Red Cross for many years. He began his duties about the middle of June and, assisted by his son, continued until the order for the abandonment of the camp was issued. The territory covered by this agency included also the camps at Miami and Fernandina. The affairs of the Red Cross in this field were most efficiently conducted and with great credit to Dr. Kent and his assistant. In addition to the medical and hospital supplies and delicacies, which were furnished in great quantities, over thirteen thousand dollars were spent in adding to the comforts of the sick and convalescent. Dr. Kent makes the following interesting report:
On June 16 I arrived in Jacksonville, in company with Miss Clara Barton, then on her way to Key West and Santiago. We visited Camp Cuba Libre in the afternoon, when I enjoyed the great advantage of being presented by Miss Barton to several of the officials as the representative of the Red Cross at this point. On the following morning I visited the hospital—that of the Second Division, the First being at Miami and the Third not formed—where I found what appeared to me to be very distressing and unhealthful conditions. The number of patients at that time was small, but, few as they were, no adequate provision had been made for their comfort. Most of them, indeed, were on cots, but few had either sheets or nightshirts to cover their nakedness. They were either lying in soiled underclothing, sweltering in the heat under army blankets, or destitute of any clothing whatever. I lost no time in ordering one hundred sheets, with the same number of pillow-cases and ticks, having assurance from one of the surgeons that the latter could be readily filled with moss and pine needles, making a comfort-giving and healthful pillow. By the time this need was met I learned that the sick were destitute of suitable food, so I made it my next business to provide a sufficiency of this. No sooner had I begun this work than I had to face the fact that the hospital had no proper facilities for cooking this food and no place in which to care for it and keep it cool and sweet when prepared. So I purchased a large Blue Flame oil stove and a No. 6 Alaska ice chest. I soon discovered that the patients were suffering from want of ice and made haste to secure an adequate supply of this. But in all these things adequate provision for one week was no adequate provision for the next. Patients came into the hospital in ever-increasing numbers; cots, sheets, pillows and pillow-cases had to be doubled and trebled and quadrupled as the weeks went by. The government provided many sheets, many cots and many pillows, but the demand ever outran the supply, and the Red Cross was called on continually to make up the lack. In the matter of ice, milk, eggs, lemons, malted milk, peptonoids, clam bouillon, beef extract, calfsfoot jelly, gelatine, cornstarch, tapioca, condensed milk, rice, barley, sugar, butter, and delicacies of all kinds, the government made no provision, neither did the hospital from its ration fund. All supplies of this kind were furnished by the Red Cross or by other charitable or beneficent agencies. So far as I have been able to learn, and I questioned those in charge of the division hospitals, no use was made of the ration fund in the Jacksonville hospitals in the way of procuring delicacies for patients. The sole reliance for these things was the Red Cross and similar agencies of individual and organized beneficence.
Of individual beneficence the most marked examples were Mrs. Marshall, proprietor of the Carleton Hotel; Mrs. Moulton, wife of Colonel Moulton, of the Second Illinois, and Mrs. Rich, a quiet, modest lady of this city. These gave their whole time to the work of devising ways and means for promoting the comfort and health of the sick. They made chicken broth, ice cream, wine jellies and a variety of delicacies grateful to the palates of the sick soldiers. Other Jacksonville ladies did much in this direction, but these ladies were constant and untiring in their efforts. Though Mrs. Marshall had many of the soldiers cared for free of charge at her own hotel, never for a day was she absent from the camp. She was a veritable ministering angel, and the Red Cross is greatly indebted to her for much of the information that helped us to give wisely and when most needed. Through Mrs. Moulton many of the good people of Chicago bestowed their benefactions. Five days out of every week found Mrs. Rich at one of the division hospitals, making her ice cream for the boys and giving them a taste of her delicious wine jellies. When the Red Cross learned of her excellent work it took pains to keep her supplied with all needed material, beside furnishing a twenty-five quart ice cream freezer with which to do her work. All of these women deserve a more extended and a worthier tribute than we can pay them in this report.
With the growth of the hospital there came ever-increasing demands for ice and milk, for delicacies of every sort, and for all the comforts and conveniences that tend to make hospital work pleasant and effective. Early in the history of the Second Division hospital, the Red Cross paid the bills for a bath house and a kitchen. It furnished also the large circular wall tent for convalescents. It gave over a hundred cots and mattresses, and nearly a thousand pillows. Of sheets and pillow-cases, nightshirts and pajamas, it gave many thousands. We not only distributed a large number sent from New York; boxes were sent us from St. Augustine, from Augusta, Ga., from Connecticut, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia. Few people have any conception of the quantity of such articles required to keep a hospital with five hundred to seven hundred patients in good running order. So often are these things soiled that there must be at least three or four sets to every cot. When there are three or four hospitals, with an aggregate sick list ranging from fifteen hundred to two thousand, the number of sheets and pillow-cases, nightshirts and pajamas necessary to keep the beds and the patients presentable is surprisingly large. Of course the government has supplied the greater number of sheets and pillow-cases, but the Red Cross has furnished probably the greater number of pillows, nightshirts and pajamas. In none of these things has the supply ever quite equaled the demand. Even at the present time the cry of need is almost as loud as ever. When the recuperating hospital was established at Pablo Beach, the Red Cross, at the request of the chief-surgeon, supplied two hundred and fifty sets of dishes with a complete outfit of pitchers, trays, buckets and many other things. Even the business of the chief-surgeon’s office and that of the surgeon at Pablo Beach is transacted on desks furnished by the Red Cross at the request of these parties. It has contributed to furnish the diet kitchens with stoves, utensils and dishes, and has supplied the hospitals themselves with many articles of convenience and comfort. It provided four dozen large clothes hampers, printed many thousands of patient records and other papers. It had fifty large ice chests manufactured and placed one in each ward of the principal hospitals. It gave over seven hundred buckets for the carrying of offal, and furnished screens for the use of the nurses. It gave bed-pans and urinals in large numbers, over a thousand tumblers, medicine glasses, graduated glasses, a sterilizing apparatus, hypodermic syringes and needles. Of the latter we learned that there was not a single whole one in the hospital at the time we were called on. Scores of men had been obliged to receive their hypodermic injections from a broken point, suffering greatly from the operation and subsequent results. The Red Cross has furnished over one thousand dollars worth of medicines not on the government list, besides malted milk, peptonoids, pepto mangan, peptogenic milk powder, maltine and a large shipment of medicines sent from New York. It has given over a thousand bath and surgical sponges and towels in immense quantities. In short, with the exception of tents, cots, blankets, and, to a considerable extent, sheets, furnished by the government, the Red Cross, up to September 1st, furnished the greater part of the hospital equipment. As the several heads of divisions have said to me again and again. “The hospitals never could have equipped themselves from their ration fund. They would have broken down utterly without the aid of the Red Cross.”
We have spent here over thirteen thousand dollars in cash for hospital equipment and supplies of various kinds, including ice and milk, in addition to the large quantities of goods sent from New York the cost of which we do not know. And with all this, the need has not been met as fully or as promptly as it should have been. The number of the sick increased so greatly beyond the expectations of the officers in charge that the supply has never, for any considerable time, been equal to the demand. Even now, when the government has allowed sixty cents a day for each patient in the hospital, and has recently so extended the order as to include regimental as well as division hospitals, there is still continuous appeal to the Red Cross for a variety of things, which those in charge of the hospital fund do not feel warranted in buying, and as yet few of the regiments have gotten their hospitals into shape to ask for anything. As they move to Savannah in a few days, they will not be in condition to draw any money for weeks to come. It is very fortunate therefore, that your committee has seen fit to grant our last requisition, for the goods you have shipped will be of great benefit to the soldiers on their way to Cuba.
I have omitted to state that a most important part of the work of the Red Cross has been the supplying of ice for the purpose of cooling the drinking water of the camps. Our ice bills for camp and hospitals, at an average of thirty-five cents per hundred pounds have been over six thousand dollars, the Second Division hospital alone often consuming from four to five tons a day. Our milk bills were also large, averaging for some time over five hundred dollars a week, at a cost of forty cents a gallon.
Our relations with both army and medical officials have been, on the whole, harmonious and pleasant. Perhaps the best evidence of this is the fact that the government teams and men have always been at our service whether to haul the goods from the wharf to the store or from the store to the camp. Some little feeling arose over my attitude in regard to the necessity for female nurses, but as the outcome has abundantly shown the soundness of my contention, that has pretty much passed away. Our hospitals have been far from ideal but I believe they are generally regarded as the best in the country, and perhaps none have realized their shortcomings and defects more than the men charged with their administration. It is not an easy matter to select, even from an American army, a sufficient number of capable and reliable men for so large and complex an institution, and incapacity or infidelity at any point is liable not only to bring most serious results, but to throw discredit upon the entire management. Doubtless many things have been done that should never have been permitted, and many left undone that constitute a record of what ought to be criminal neglect, yet these things can be wholly avoided only by men of the highest ability and largest experience, working with trained subordinates, and with every facility for successful endeavor. It has not been possible to secure such conditions in any of the hospitals. The men in charge have been obliged to use such material as they could get, and often the commanding officers of regiments, when asked for a detail for hospital work, have given the very poorest material they had. I am disposed, therefore, to have pretty large charity always for the surgeon-in-charge. He has a most difficult task, and at the very best, can only hope for moderate success. Ideal results he can never secure.
I have said nothing of our work at Miami or Fernandina, for there is little to say. The troops were moved from Miami so soon after we were made acquainted with their needs, that we did little more than supply the hospital with ice, during the weeks in which the sick were convalescing. We were not permitted to do even this at Fernandina. Those in charge of the hospitals, division and regimental, disclaimed all need of aid. The government supplied them with all that they required. We have had many testimonies from officers and privates, showing the profound appreciation everywhere felt for the work of the Red Cross. Perhaps no other part of its work was so highly prized by the soldiers at large as that which furnished them cool drinking water.