Another interesting case was that of David Brant, a ruddy-faced lad about 18 years of age. He was suffering in some way that could not at first be discovered. It was noticed that he kept moving his feet in a distressing sort of way. These members were uncovered, when, to the surprise of the Sister attending him, it was found that he had still his boots on and that they seemed ready to burst. Some of the soldiers at hand came with knives and cut them off, piece by piece, with great difficulty, and then, alas! it was found that veins of the boy’s legs had burst open, and his boots were filled with clotted blood. The doctors were sent for, and had great trouble in stanching the blood, and in tying up the arteries. It need hardly be added that the poor lad died the next day in great agony. He was the victim of a forced march in which the men were made to run for several miles without stopping. The Sisters wrote to his father the least painful account possible of the poor son’s death, and received a most grateful reply, the bereaved gentleman adding that but for them he would never have known the real truth of the sad event.
“Hiram” was a victim of camp-fever; unfortunately for him he had been kept in camp too long after he took sick, and the fly-blister had been applied to the back of his neck. Some of his comrades took it off, but applied no dressing of any kind, so that the coarse blue flannel collar of his shirt grew into the raw sore, and his hair also festered into it. It was his cries that first attracted the attention of a Sister, for he was brought into the hospital in this condition.
She found a soldier trying to relieve him by applying a coarse wet towel in cold water to his neck, and this caused the screams of the sufferer. A soft sponge, warm water and castile soap came into requisition here, and when the hair was cut so as to free it from the sore, and the gathers of the shirt loosened from the collar, the poor boy began to feel a little relief. As he lay with his face buried in the pillow he did not see who was attending him.
“Who is doing that?”
“A Sister of Mercy,” was the reply.
“No,” said he, “no one but my mother could do it.”
By degrees the sore was nicely dressed with soft old linen and cold water—the only dressing allowed by the doctors—and then Hiram stole a glance at his new friend and nurse.
“What are you, at all?” was the first question.
The Sister tried to make him understand what a Sister of Mercy does, or tries to do for those who suffer, and he sank back in his pillow, saying,
“I don’t care what you are; you are a mother to me.”