"It was, in no other sense a hospital, than that it was a depot for wounded men. There were defective management and chaotic confusion. The men were neglected, the hospital organization was imperfect, and the mortality was in consequence frightfully large. Their condition was horrible. The severity of the campaign in a malarious country had prostrated many with fevers, and typhoid, in its most malignant forms, was raging with increasing fatality.
"These stories of suffering reached Miss Gilson at a moment when the previous labors of the campaign had nearly exhausted her strength; but her duty seemed plain. There were no volunteers for the emergency, and she prepared to go. Her friends declared that she could not survive it; but replying that she could not die in a cause more sacred, she started out alone. A hospital was to be created, and this required all the tact, finesse and diplomacy of which a woman is capable. Official prejudice and professional pride was to be met and overcome. A new policy was to be introduced, and it was to be done without seeming to interfere. Her doctrine and practice always were instant, silent, and cheerful obedience to medical and disciplinary orders, without any qualification whatever; and by this she overcame the natural sensitiveness of the medical authorities.
"A hospital kitchen was to be organized upon her method of special diet; nurses were to learn her way, and be educated to their duties; while cleanliness, order, system, were to be enforced in the daily routine. Moving quietly on with her work of renovation, she took the responsibility of all changes that became necessary; and such harmony prevailed in the camp that her policy was vindicated as time rolled on. The rate of mortality was lessened, and the hospital was soon considered the best in the department. This was accomplished by a tact and energy which sought no praise, but modestly veiled themselves behind the orders of officials. The management of her kitchen was like the ticking of a clock—regular discipline, gentle firmness, and sweet temper always. The diet for the men was changed three times a day; and it was her aim to cater as far as possible to the appetites of individual men. Her daily rounds in the wards brought her into personal intercourse with every patient, and she knew his special need. At one time, when nine hundred men were supplied from her kitchen (with seven hundred rations daily), I took down her diet list for one dinner, and give it here in a note,[D] to show the variety of the articles, and her careful consideration of the condition of separate men."
The following passage from the pen of Harriet Martineau, in regard to the management of the kitchen at Scutari, by Florence Nightingale, is true also of those organized by Miss Gilson in Virginia. The parallel is so close, and the illustration of the daily administration of this department of her work so vivid, that, if the circumstances under which it was written were not known, I should have said it was a faithful picture of our kitchen in the Colored Hospital at City Point:—
"The very idea of that kitchen was savory in the wards; for out of it came, at the right moment, arrowroot, hot and of the pleasantest consistence; rice puddings, neither hard on the one hand or clammy on the other; cool lemonade for the feverish; cans full of hot tea for the weary, and good coffee for the faint. When the sinking sufferer was lying with closed eyes, too feeble to make moan or sigh, the hospital spoon was put between his lips, with the mouthful of strong broth or hot wine, which rallied him till the watchful nurse came round again. The meat from that kitchen was tenderer than any other, the beef tea was more savory. One thing that came out of it was the lesson on the saving of good cookery. The mere circumstance of the boiling water being really boiling there, made a difference of two ounces of rice in every four puddings, and of more than half the arrowroot used. The same quantity of arrowroot which made a pint thin and poor in the general kitchen, made two pints thick and good in Miss Nightingale's.
"Again, in contrasting the general kitchen with the light or special diet prepared for the sicker men, there was all the difference between having placed before them 'the cold mutton chop with its opaque fat, the beef with its caked gravy, the arrowroot stiff and glazed, all untouched, as might be seen by the bed-sides in the afternoons, while the patients were lying back, sinking for want of support,' and seeing 'the quick and quiet nurses enter as the clock struck, with their hot water tins, hot morsels ready cut, bright knife, and fork, and spoon,—and all ready for instant eating!'
"The nurses looked for Miss Gilson's word of praise, and labored for it; and she had only to suggest a variety in the decoration of the tents to stimulate a most honorable rivalry among them, which soon opened a wide field for displaying ingenuity and taste, so that not only was its standard the highest, but it was the most cheerfully picturesque hospital at City Point.
"This colored hospital service was one of those extraordinary tasks, out of the ordinary course of army hospital discipline, that none but a woman could execute. It required more than a man's power of endurance, for men fainted and fell under the burden. It required a woman's discernment, a woman's tenderness, a woman's delicacy and tact; it required such nerve and moral force, and such executive power, as are rarely united in any woman's character. The simple grace with which she moved about the hospital camps, the gentle dignity with which she ministered to the suffering about her, won all hearts. As she passed through the wards, the men would follow her with their eyes, attracted by the grave sweetness of her manner; and when she stopped by some bed-side, and laid her hand upon the forehead and smoothed the hair of a soldier, speaking some cheering, pleasant word, I have seen the tears gather in his eyes, and his lips quiver, as he tried to speak or to touch the fold of her dress, as if appealing to her to listen, while he opened his heart about the mother, wife, or sister far away. I have seen her in her sober gray flannel gown, sitting motionless by the dim candle-light,—which was all our camp could afford,—with her eyes open and watchful, and her hands ever ready for all those endless wants of sickness at night, especially sickness that may be tended unto death, or unto the awful struggle between life and death, which it was the lot of nearly all of us at some time to keep watch over until the danger had gone by. And in sadder trials, when the life of a soldier whom she had watched and ministered to was trembling in the balance between earth and heaven, waiting for Him to make all things new, she has seemed, by some special grace of the Spirit, to reach the living Christ, and draw a blessing down as the shining way was opened to the tomb. And I have seen such looks of gratitude from weary eyes, now brightened by visions of heavenly glory, the last of many recognitions of her ministry. Absorbed in her work, unconscious of the spiritual beauty which invested her daily life,—whether in her kitchen, in the heat and overcrowding incident to the issues of a large special diet list, or sitting at the cot of some poor lonely soldier, whispering of the higher realities of another world,—she was always the same presence of grace and love, of peace and benediction. I have been with her in the wards when the men have craved some simple religious services,—the reading of Scripture, the repetition of a psalm, the singing of a hymn, or the offering of a prayer,—and invariably the men were melted to tears by the touching simplicity of her eloquence.
"These were the tokens of her ministry among the sickest men; but it was not here alone that her influence was felt in the hospital. Was there jealousy in the kitchen, her quick penetration detected the cause, and in her gentle way harmony was restored; was there profanity among the convalescents, her daily presence and kindly admonition or reproof, with an occasional glance which spoke her sorrow for such sin, were enough to check the evil; or was there hardship or discontent, the knowledge that she was sharing the discomfort too, was enough to compel patient endurance until a remedy could be provided. And so, through all the war, from the seven days' conflict upon the Peninsula, in those early July days of 1862, through the campaigns of Antietam and Fredericksburg, of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, and after the conflicts of the Wilderness, and the fierce and undecided battles which were fought for the possession of Richmond and Petersburg, in 1864 and 1865, she labored steadfastly on until the end. Through scorching heat and pinching cold, in the tent or upon the open field, in the ambulance or on the saddle, through rain and snow, amid unseen perils of the enemy, under fire upon the field, or in the more insidious dangers of contagion, she worked quietly on, doing her simple part with all womanly tact and skill, until now the hospital dress is laid aside, and she rests, with the sense of a noble work done, and with the blessings and prayers of the thousands whose sufferings she has relieved, or whose lives she has saved."
Amid all these labors, Miss Gilson found time and opportunity to care for the poor negro washerwomen and their families, who doing the washing of the hospital were allowed rations and a rude shelter by the government in a camp near the hospital grounds. Finding that they were suffering from overcrowding, privation, neglect, and sickness, she procured the erection of comfortable huts for them, obtained clothing from the North for the more destitute, and by example and precept encouraged them in habits of neatness and order, while she also inculcated practical godliness in all their life. In a short time from one of the most miserable this became the best of the Freedmen's camps.