Five Minutes’ Grace.
“I will give you five minutes,” I said, “to leave my room. If you are not gone by that time, commissioned officer as you are, and gentleman as you ought to be, I will have you taken to the guard-house, and then explain this matter to the surgeon-general.”
He waited a minute or two, soliloquizing audibly that I must fancy myself the Secretary of War, and he would make me know my position, but soon made up his mind that discretion was the better part of valor, and left. Proper measures were no doubt taken to punish such conduct, for though I made no complaint, there were no secrets in a hospital, and after a few weeks he disappeared, sent no doubt to that Botany Bay—“the front.” He took a gallant leave of his associates, hinting that his talents demanded a wider field of action than a hospital.
But the tables were about to be turned. Not forever would I be allowed to carry war into the enemy’s country, or be the sole defender of that friend by whom I had stood so gallantly. The whiskey barrel was destined after all to be turned into a weapon of offense.
The Tables Turned.
The bold man who thus declared hostilities, and by a coup-de-guerre changed the whole nature of the war from offensive to defensive tactics, had been bar-keeper in a Georgia tavern, afterwards a clerk in a Macon dispensary, in order to escape field duty. Coming to Richmond he passed the board of surgeons by a process known only to themselves, which often rejected good practitioners, and gave appointments to apothecary boys.
Fate sent him to our hospital, where the brilliant idea struck him to check thefts of whiskey in the feminine department. He inaugurated his plans by ordering a pint of it for a single patient.
The etiquette of a hospital enjoins that no one but the chief surgeon shall dispute an inferior surgeon’s prescription, so I carried this generous order to the chief, received his instructions not to exceed the usual “from two to four ounces” without being served with a formal requisition signed by the surgeon in charge, and so I wrote this gentleman (a contract surgeon) a few lines, courteously explanatory of my reasons for so cutting him down. This matter being arranged, I forgot all about it, but the next day the blow was struck; the following note being handed to me:
“Hospital, Richmond, April 3, 1864.
“The Chief Matron:—Is respectfully asked to state the amount of water used as compared with amount of whiskey in making toddy. Also if strength of toddy has been uniform since January 1st, 1863. Also if any change has taken place in diluting within the same period. She will also state what the change has been; also when made, and by whose authority.