History of the United States Sanitary Commission being the general report of its work during the war of the rebellion / by Charles J. Stil̐lue.

  • Stil̐lue, Charles J.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: History of the United States Sanitary Commission being the general report of its work during the war of the rebellion / by Charles J. Stil̐lue. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    But even if this difficulty could have been sur- mounted, there was found in the natural ignorance that prevailed concerning the real wants of the men and their comparative importance, another obstacle to the practical usefulness of all this well meant zeal. As no one knew anything, by experience, of a soldier’s life, and as it was so difficult to find out exactly how far the government proposed to care for them, the imagination of the kind-hearted took the widest range in seeking for methods to relieve his necessities. Who has forgotten those strange appendages to the head gear of the first three months’ men called “ Havelocks,” the work of so many busy hands and warm hearts, remembered now, only as an illustration of the wasted labor and energy of a true but misguided zeal ? Who does not recall the strange medley of articles called delicacies, which, together with many things of essential value to the sutFering soldier, were poured indiscriminately into the Hospitals, during the early months of the war, or the indignation of excitable philanthropists,—men and women,—when they were told that the patients could not be the recipients of their peculiar care, but must be left in the charge of the Surgeons, who, alone, could be permitted to provide for their treatment and regulate their diet? The nature, then, of the supplies and the mode of distributing them, were soon found to be practical questions, not to be solved by a mere sentiment of pity, or even by a spirit of devotion to the welfare of the soldier, no matter how pure its motive, but solely by considerations growing out of the exigencies of the military service. There was here a wide field for the 23