This ward was under the charge of the same physician as the erysipelas ward—Dr. Henry Green Bates of Worcester, Mass. Dr. Bates’ wife was a Brookfield Stone, and she, seeing my diagnosis card, discovered that my mother’s name and her maiden name were identical. Although no near relationship could be established, it created a friendly interest, and Dr. Bates took care of my wound himself, dressing it twice a day until the gangrene was out, which was in just six days. But I was not then sent back to Ward 4. I was made comfortable in a private tent and remained under his care until February, 1865, during which time the Doctor and Mrs. Bates kept me supplied with newspapers and books to read and delicacies to eat.
Early in February, Dr. Bates left Emory Hospital, going to Newport News to take charge of a hospital being built to take care of the wounded expected when the campaign should open at Petersburg, and I was sent back to Ward 4.
The critical period of three months with me, from August to December, 1864, I was cared for by Dr. Bates, and to him I owe my life. Had I been obliged to remain in Ward 4, through those three critical months, I should not have survived. The work of the wound dresser, I always thought, was very inferior. The food was fairly good and we had plenty of it. We also had plenty of stimulants—a little bottle of brandy and a bottle of porter every day.
There must have been a large number of badly wounded men on the boat that took me to Washington. For a while the long roll was heard so often at that hospital carrying out the dead, it was abolished, the effect was so depressing.
When I was taken back to Ward 4, at the time Dr. Bates left, Dr. Ensign learned that Dr. Bates and his wife had formed something of an attachment for me and that I had been a sort of special patient over there. I was, consequently, ever afterward treated with a good deal of kindness by him and so got through the rest of the time I was in the hospital very comfortably. It was depressing to note the change that had taken place in Ward 4 during my absence in Dr. Bates’ ward. When I went into Ward 4, it was full to crowding. On my return, less than half the beds were occupied, more than half the patients having died.
In the ambulance that carried me from the boat to the hospital was a man who must have been in great pain. He complained bitterly. He was wounded in the foot. The day after we got to the hospital his foot was amputated. In a few days a piece of his leg was cut off, and again his knee was sacrificed, and inside of two weeks he was a dead man. The gangrene was in his foot when we got to the hospital and as soon as an amputation was performed it would break out in the new wound made. He was a Connecticut man, married. His wife came on and was with him during the last days he lived and took his body home with her.
A Michigan man used to excite my sympathy. He was wounded in the right shoulder and the bones of that joint were knocked all to pieces. The upper part of the humerus, a part of the clavicle and a part of the scapula had been removed. He was a great broad-shouldered, six-foot-six man, and to see that Hercules pacing up and down the ward—for he could not keep still—his arm in a sling and holding it up or steadying it with his left hand as best he could, the wounded shoulder still hanging way down—was a most pitiable sight.
The day after I got to the hospital I noticed a bed away by itself in one corner of the ward, with a large frame over it covered with mosquito netting, and I soon saw things which indicated that there was a wounded man there. On inquiry, I learned there was a man in there lying at the point of death. The doctors did not expect him to live and they were just trying to make his last hours as comfortable as they could. He was a German by birth and belonged to a New York regiment. He had been hit in the thorax, the ball passing through from side to side piercing the bones on both sides and going through a portion containing vital parts. When I was taken to the erysipelas ward he was still alive, and when I came back, the wound dresser thought he had begun to mend. When I returned to the ward in February, he was able to get around on crutches, and when I left the hospital in May he could walk without his crutches. He was not very elastic on his feet to be sure, and it was pretty funny walking. He walked on the end of his feet and toes, his heels being up in the air—but he could balance himself and get around quite a little. This was regarded in the hospital as a remarkable cure and it was attributed to the remarkable vitality of the man.
During the first weeks I was in the hospital, when the ward was full of wounded men, many of them seriously wounded, it would be expected there would be considerable noise. To the contrary there was almost no noise at all. One almost never heard a moan and the attendants wore slippers with felt bottoms, so they moved about making hardly the slightest noise.
Dr. Ensign, the doctor who had charge of Ward 4, was a New York doctor. In addition to his having the care of Ward 4, he was operating surgeon of the whole hospital. He and Dr. Bates, I think, were the two principal physicians there. Dr. Bates, as already stated, had charge of the two worst wards—the gangrene ward and the erysipelas ward. Dr. Moseley, the head doctor, was, I think, just a figure head. He never did anything and was seldom seen about the hospital.