Hospital pencillings : being a diary while in Jefferson General Hospital, Jeffersonville, Ind., and others at Nashville, Tennessee, as matron and visitor.

  • Powers, Elvira J.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hospital pencillings : being a diary while in Jefferson General Hospital, Jeffersonville, Ind., and others at Nashville, Tennessee, as matron and visitor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material is part of the Elmer Belt Florence Nightingale collection. The original may be consulted at University of California Libraries.

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    I do believe I would be willing to give ten dollars for a a feather pillow to lay my bead on to-night, said that young hero Willie who had run away from bloodhounds in Alabama, and whose shaven head was throbbing with the disfiguring erysipelas. He had the pillow, and it came with- out money and without price, a gift from some noble, unknown Northern lady. God bless them, have I mentally ejaculated scores of times upon such occasions, or when the jams, the pickles, peaches, berries, or other delicacy, was the only thing which the palate would not refuse, and by which could be coaxed back the appetite. Oh, if they could only know and see, as we do, the lives sai^^ed, or the hours lengthened, comforted and cheered, they would not let the aid society run down, and the cucumbers and tomatos become the victim of King Frost or procrastination. They would not spend so much time in talk over their tea, of this husband or that son, but would work, if peradventure the fortunes of war should throw that son or husband into the channel of this bounty. They would not cease their labor of love because this one or that one had returned with the story that he had been in hospitals, and never had anything from the Sanitary, with his wise opinion' that the surgeons and nurses were the only recipients. If he were closely questioned or his clothes examined, the scrutiny might betray the fact, that stationery and reading matter at least had come to him by that source, if he was not even then using a sling, crutch, handkerchief or shu't bearing the mark of some aid society. Or the complainant may have been situated somewhat as those of the 8th and 18th Indiana regiments, which have been constantly travelling, and never accessible to Sanitary stores for four years, until now, at Sa- vannah, they have received a perfect God-send, and have occasion to use, as we are informed, the biggest word a soldier