Half a Century Part 27

In that sad ward one superior, intelligent young man, who was thought to be doing well, suddenly burst an artery, and ropes were put up to warn visitors and others not to come in, and we who were in, moved with bated breath lest some motion should start the life-current. While his last hope was on a stillness which forbade him to move a finger, two lady visitors came to the door, were forbidden to enter, but seeing me inside, must follow the sheep instinct of the s.e.x, and go where any other woman had gone. So, with pert words, they forced their way in, made a general flutter, and, oh horror! one of them caught her hoops on the iron cot of the dying man. He was only saved from a severe jerk by the prompt intervention of the special nurse. They were led out as quietly as possible, but the man had received a slight jerk and a serious shock. The hemorrhage would probably have returned if they had not come in, but it did return, and the young, strong life ebbed steadily away in a crimson current which spread over the floor.

From that day until the end of my hospital work, one fact forced itself upon my attention, and this is, that with all the patriotism of the American women, during that war, and all their gush of sympathy for the soldier, a vast majority were much more willing to "kiss him for his mother" than render him any solid service, and that not one in a hundred of the women who succeeded in getting into hospitals would dress so as not to be an object of terror to men whose life depended on quiet.

Women were capable of any heroism save wearing a dress suitable for hospital work. The very, very few who laid aside their hoops, those instruments of dread and torture, generally donned bloomers, and gave offense by airs of independence.

Good women would come long distances to see dying husbands, brothers and sons, and fill the wards with alarm by their hoops. When any one was hurt by them they were very sorry, but never gave up the cause of offense, while their desire to look well, and the finery and fixings they donned to improve their appearance, was a very broad and painful burlesque. Women were seldom permitted to stay in a hospital over night, even with a dying friend, and the inhabitants were generally glad when they started for home.

It was the dress nuisance which caused nuns to have the preference in so many cases; but I could not see or hear that they ever did anything but make converts to the church and take care of clothing and jellies.

One thing is certain, _i.e._, that women never can do efficient and general service in hospitals until their dress is prescribed by laws inexorable as those of the Medes and Persians. Then, that dress should be entirely dest.i.tute of steel, starch, whale-bone, flounces, and ornaments of all descriptions; should rest on the shoulders, have a skirt from the waist to the ankle, and a waist which leaves room for breathing. I never could have done my hospital work but for the dress which led most people to mistake me for a nun.

CHAPTER LVIII.

SPECIAL WORK.

In the wilderness of work I must choose, and began to select men who had been given up by the surgeons, and whom I thought might be saved by special care. Surgeon Kelly soon entered into my plan, and made his ward my headquarters. To it my special patients were brought, until there was no more room for them. That intuitive perception of the natural position of muscles, and the importance of keeping them in it, which came to me on first seeing a wound dressed, gave me such control over pain that I used to go through the wards between midnight and morning and put amputation cases to sleep at the rate of one in fifteen minutes.

In these morning walks I saw that the nurses were on duty and had substantial refreshments, saw those changes for the worse, sure to come, if they came at all, in those chill hours. Seeing them soon was important to meeting them successfully, and I succeeded in breaking up many a chill before it did serious damage, which must have proved fatal if left until the morning visit of the Surgeon. Also, in those walks I chose special cases; have more than once sat down by a man and calculated in this way:

"You may have twenty, forty years of useful life, if I can save you; I shall certainly die one year sooner for the labor I expend on you, but there will be a large gain in the average of life and usefulness; and when you risked all of your life for the country as much mine as yours, it is but just that I should give a small part of mine to save you."

Every man lived whom I elected to life, and Dr. Kelly, who knew more than any one else about my plans, and on whom I most counted for aid, has said that I saved enough to the government in bounty money, by returning men to duty who would otherwise have died, to warrant it in supporting me the balance of my life; but his statements could not always be relied upon, for he insisted that I never slept, had not been asleep during the seven weeks spent in Campbell, was a witch and would float like a cork, if thrown from the Long Bridge into the Potomac.

In selecting a man in desperate case to be saved, I always took his temperament and previous life into consideration. A man of pure life and sanguine temperament was hard to kill. Give him the excuse of good nursing and he would live through injuries which must be fatal to a bilious, suspicious man, or one who had been guilty of any excess. A tobacco chewer or smoker died on small provocation. A drunkard or debauchee was killed by a scratch.

There were two ward surgeons who disapproved of the innovation of a woman in Campbell, and especially of one held amenable to no rules. They were both in favor of heroic treatment, which I did not care to witness, and I spent little time in their wards. One of them kept a man, with two bricks tied to his foot and hanging over the foot of the bed, until he died, after ten days of a sleepless agony such as could not well have been excelled in an Inquisition; while his wife tried to comfort him under a torture she begged in vain to have remitted. The night after she started home with his body, I was pa.s.sing through the ward, when I came upon a young Philadelphia Zouave in a perfect paroxysm of anguish.

Three nurses stood around him, and to my inquiry "What _is_ the matter?"

replied by dumb show that coming death was the matter, and that soon all would be over; while in words they told me he had not slept for forty-eight hours.

I had one place a chair for me, sat down, and with my long, thin hands grasped the thigh stump, which was making all the trouble, drew and pressed the muscle into a natural, easy position, cooed and talked and comforted the sufferer, as I should have done a sick baby, and in ten minutes he was asleep.

Then I whispered the nurses to bring cotton and oak.u.m, and little cushions; made them put the cotton and oak.u.m, in small tufts, to my index fingers; and while I crooned my directions in a sing-song lullaby air, I worked in this support, gradually and imperceptibly withdrawing my hands, until I could subst.i.tute the little cushions for the force by which they held the muscle in proper position. This done, my boy-soldier slept as sweetly as ever he had done in his crib.

Next morning a nurse came running for me to hurry to him. He had slept six hours, waked, had his breakfast, and had his wound dressed, and now the pain was back bad as ever. I went, fixed the mangled muscle with reference to his change of position, made a half-mould to hold it there, and before I had finished he began an eight-hour sleep. Ten days after he was sent home to his mother, and I saw or heard of him no more.

CHAPTER LIX.

HEROIC AND ANTI-HEROIC TREATMENT.

The other ward in which I was not welcome, adjoined that one in which my room was situated, and to reach it I must go out of doors or pa.s.s through one-half the length of that ward. In these pa.s.sages I had an opportunity for studying Piemia and its ordinary treatment, and could give the men lemonade when they wanted it.

In this ward lay a young German with a wounded ankle. He had a broad, square forehead, skin white as wax, large blue eyes and yellow hair, inclined to curl. His whole appearance indicated high culture, and an organization peculiarly sensitive to pleasure or pain; but no one seemed to understand that he suffered more than others from a like cause.

Surgeon and nurses scoffed at his moans, and thought it babyish, for a muscular man over six feet to show so many signs of pain. I think that from some cause, the surgeon felt vindictive toward him, and that his subordinates took their cue from him. When I went to give him lemonade, he would clutch my hand or dress, look up in my face, and plead:

"Oh, mutter! mutter!"

But if I sat down to soothe and comfort him, a nurse always came to remind me of the surgeon's orders, and I used to go around on the outside, that he might not see and call me. When he was in the amputation room I heard his shrieks and groans, and carried a gla.s.s of wine to the door for him.

He heard my voice, and called "Mutter! mutter!"

I pushed past the orderly, ran to him, and his pleading eyes seemed to devour me as he fastened his gaze on my face. I cannot think to this day why be should have been nude for the amputation of a foot; but he was, and some one threw a towel across his loins as I approached.

Dr. Baxter said:

"No sympathy! no sympathy!"

So I stood by him, placed a hand on each side of his corrugated brow, steadied my voice and said:

"Be a man and a soldier!"

He had asked me for bread; I gave him a stone, and no wonder he dashed it back in my face. With a fierce cry he said:

"I hev been a man and a sojer long enough!"

Ah! verily had he, and much too long. Days before that he should have been "a boy again;" aye, a baby, a very infant--should have been soothed and softened and comforted with all the tenderness of mother-love; but even now, in this cruel extremity, every sign of sympathy was denied him. Some one put a hand gently but firmly on each of my shoulders, turned my back to him, took me out of the room, and I hurried away, while the air shuddered with his shrieks and groans. After he had been brought back to his place in the ward I could often hear him as I pa.s.sed to and from my room, and even while I occupied it.

Once he saw me through the open door, and called, "Mutter! mutter!"

I went, knelt by him, took his hands, which were stretched appealingly to me, and spoke comforting words, while his blue eyes seemed ready to start from their sockets, as he clung to my hands with the old familiar cry:

"Oh, Mutter! Mutter!"

He was strapped down to his iron cot, about as closely as he had been to the amputation table, and the cot fastened to the floor. I had not been five minutes at his side when his special nurse hurried up and warned me to leave, saying:

"It's surgeon's orders. He's not going to have any babyin'!"

I drew my hands from the frantic grasp, took away that last hold on human sympathy, and hurried oat, while his cry of "Oh, mutter! mutter!"

rung in my ears as I turned and looked on his pure high brow for the last time.

Next morning I heard he had lock-jaw, and that the surgeon was to leave.

The night after that victim of some frightful, fiendish experiment had been carried to the dead-house, I was pa.s.sing through the ward, when attracted by sounds of convulsive weeping, and I found a young man in an agony of grief, in one of those sobbing fits sure to come to the bravest. He was in a high fever, and while I bathed his face and hands, I asked the cause of his outbreak, and he sobbed:

"Oh, the pain in my wound! This is the third night I have not slept, and my G.o.d! I can bear it no longer!"

It was a flesh-wound in the thigh, such an one as usually proved fatal, and while I set him to talking I began patching sc.r.a.ps of observation into a theory. He was from Pennsylvania, and bitterly charged his State with having done nothing for her wounded, and when I asked why he had not sent for me, he said:

"Oh, I thought you were from Ma.s.sachusetts, like all the rest of them; and if my own State would do nothing for me, I would not beg. People come here every day looking for Ma.s.sachusetts soldiers. Since I have been frantic here, ladies have come and stood and looked at me, and said 'Poor fellow!' as if I had been a dog. I was as well raised as any of them, even if I am a common soldier."

I thought his recovery very doubtful, and talked to draw his thoughts to the better land. To his charges against his native land, I said: "I am a Pennsylvanian; and more than that, the Governor of Pennsylvania sent me to you; bade me come to-night, that you might know he had not forgotten you."

"He did? Why, how did he know anything about it?"