The unnatural woman had deserted it, leaving it in the railroad depot, but the father fortunately was still with us and to him I appealed. A short furlough was obtained for him, and he was despatched home with his embarrassing charge and a quart of milk. He was a wretched picture of helplessness, but had I sent again for the mother I should never have got rid of her. It may be remarked en passant that she was not wholly ungrateful, for the baby was named after me.
Home-sickness.
There were no means of keeping the relations of patients from coming to them. There had been rules made to meet their invasion, but it was impossible to carry them out, as in the instance of a wife wanting to remain with her husband; and besides even the better class of people looked upon the comfort and care of a hospital as a farce. They resented the detention there of men who in many instances could lie in bed and point to their homes within sight, and argued that they would have better attention and food if allowed to go to their families. That maladie du pays called commonly nostalgia, the home-sickness which wrings the heart and impoverishes the blood, killed many a brave soldier; and the matron who day by day had to stand helpless and powerless by the bed of the sufferer, knowing that a week’s furlough would make his heart sing for joy, and save his wife from widowhood, learned the most bitter lesson of endurance that could be taught.
This home-sickness recognized no palliation. However carefully the appetite might be pampered, or stimulants prepared and given, the food never nourished, the drink never strengthened; the decay would be gradual, but death was inevitable. Perhaps when recovery seemed hopeless, a statement of the case might procure a furlough from the examining board of surgeons, but the patient would then be too weak and low to profit by the concession. It was wonderful to see how long the poor broken machine would hold out in some cases. For months I have watched a victim, helpless, hopeless, and motionless, simply receive into his mouth daily a few spoonfuls of nourishment, making no other movement, the skin barely covering the bones, and the skeleton of the face as sharply defined as it might have been days after dissolution. The answer to cheering words seldom exceeding a slight movement of the eyelids. Towards the end of the war, this detention of men who could have been furloughed at first, and some other abuses were reformed by allowing a board to be convened of three of the oldest surgeons attached to the hospital, who had authority to dispose of such cases without deferring to higher powers. There had been so much imposition practiced by men desirous of getting furloughs, and so many abuses had crept in despite the stringency of rules, that severity seemed necessary.
Spring Operations.
The spring campaign of 1864 again opened with the usual “On to Richmond.” Day after day and night after night would the sudden explosion of cannon boom upon the air. The enemy were always coming, and curiosity seemed to have usurped the place of fear among the women. In the silence of night the alarm bells would suddenly peal out, till the order to ring them at any sign of danger was modified to a command to sound them only in case of positive attack. The people became so accustomed to the report of fire-arms, that they scarcely interrupted their conversation at corners of the streets to ask in what direction the foe was advancing, or if there was any foe at all.
There was such entire reliance upon the military vigilance that guarded the city, and former attacks had been so promptly repelled, that whatever was ultimately to be the result of the war, no one trembled then for Richmond. So the summer of 1864 passed, and early in September our hearts were gladdened by the tidings that the exchange of prisoners was to be renewed. The sick and wounded of our hospital (but few in number just then), were transferred to other quarters, and the wards put in order to receive our men from Northern prisons.
Unpleasant Truths.
Can any pen or pencil do justice to those squalid pictures of famine and desolation? Those gaunt, lank skeletons with the dried yellow flesh clinging to bones enlarged by dampness and exposure? Those pale, bluish lips and feverish eyes, glittering and weird when contrasted with the famine-stricken faces,—that flitting, piteous, scared smile which greeted their fellow creatures, all will live forever before the mental vision that then witnessed it.