Pity the Civil War soldier. He didn't know what to worry about more--the bullets in front of him or the doctors in the back.
"I'd rather risk a battle than the hospitals, " one soldier wrote. And if hospitals weren't bad enough, prisons were even worse. Actually a trip to either was often a death sentence. The common element was filth. Hospitals were often set up in makeshift buildings with dirt floors, tents, or even railroad yards. Bloodied rags and amputated limbs might lie around for days. And the water supply was often contaminated. It's not surprising that two out of every three deaths resulted not from wounds but from fatal diseases brought on by such terrible conditions. Patients often waited for days for medical attention. Then the trouble really started. Many soldiers complained that the doctors were rushed and careless. "A dog is though more of down (home) than a soldier is here, " one patient wrote. Doctors knew nothing about germs or antibiotics. When minor wounds became infected, the cure was amputation. And consider the doctor's tools--unsterilized saws and bandages. But Civil War prisons made the hospitals look tame. In the Confederate Andersonville prison, most of the 35,000 prisoners had no clothes and lived outside. They were seldom fed. At least 30% of them died of disease, exposure or starvation. Walt Whitman was one of America's leading writers in the 19th century. He spent most of the war years tending the wounded in hospitals in Washington DC. His writings described just how gruesome a soldier's life could be. These are excerpts from his diary: Spend a good part of the day in a large brick mansion used as a hospital. Outdoors, within 10 yards of the front of the house, I notice a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, etc. a full load for a one-horse cart. The soldiers are nearly all young men. As usual, there are all sorts of wounds. Some of the men fearfully burnt from the explosions of artillery caissons. Amputations are going on-- the attendants dressing wounds. As you pass by, you must be on your guard where you look. I saw the other day a gentleman, a visitor, stop and turn a moment to look at an awful wound they were probing. He turn'd pale, and in a moment more he had fainted away and fallen on the floor. The releas'd prisoners of war are now coming up from the southern prisons. I have seen a number of them. The sight is worse than any sight of battle-fields, or any collection of wounded, even the bloodiest. There was (as a sample), one large boat load, of several hundreds, and out of the whole number only three individuals were able to walk from the boat. The rest were carried ashore and laid down. Can those be men--are they really not mummied, dwindled corpses? They lay there, most of them, quite still, but with a horrible look in their eyes and skinny lips (often with not enough flesh on the lips to cover their teeth). Over 50,000 have been compell'd to die the death of starvation. I wonder if I could ever convey to another the tender and terrible realities of such cases as the one I am now going to mention. Stewart C. Glover (aged about 20) was wounded in one of those fierce tussles. He had serv'd nearly three years, and would have been entitled to his discharge in a few days. The fighting had ceas'd for the day, and the general call'd for volunteers to bring in the wounded. Glover responded among the first, but while in the act of bearing in a wounded sergeant to our lines, was shot in the knee; consequence amputation and death. He kept a little diary, like so many of the soldiers. ON the day of his death he wrote the following in it, To-day the doctor says I must die--all is over with me--ah, so young to die. |