[Account of activities of U.S. Sanitary Commission].

  • Snow, Edwin M. (Edwin Miller), 1820-1888.
Date:
[1861]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: [Account of activities of U.S. Sanitary Commission]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    average (excluding travelling expenses) at the rate of about twelve hundred dollars a year. The Commission has also printed and circulated thousands of documents calling the attention of officers and men to precau- tions against disease-rules for the guidance of soldiers—manu- als for volunteer surgeons, advising them of the latest results of foreign science in the treatment of wounds, &c, most important suggestions as to the value of prophylactics against malarious disease, and other papers calling the attention of officers and men to the vital importance of sanitary measures. It supplies to the Hospitals, stores, comforts, and remedial ap- pliances, which Government does not furnish, but which are known to have saved many lives. For example, four patients in hospital at Washington last summer, who had suffered am- putation after wounds received at Bull Run, were sinking, but might, in the opinion of their surgeons, be saved by water- beds, an article which Government does not supply. The charity of our fellow-citizens enabled the Commission to pro- vide these four water-beds, and thereby to save four soldiers from death.* It provides, also, to the extent of its means, ex- perienced hospital dressers and nurses. It is constantly receiving from every part of the country sup- plies of clothing, hospital stores, o\:c. These are distributed from the Central depots at Washington, and in the West, as the necessities of the troops require—a reserve stock being kept in hand for special emergencies—such as a general eu- * During the last week it has issued vaccine matter for the vaccination of 5,000 men, on the requisition of regimental surgeons, who have been unable to obtain it from the regular medical authorities, however incredible the fact may appear.