Read Online The Better Angels of Our Nature by S. C. Gylanders - Free Book Online
Authors: S. C. Gylanders
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alcohol.
During the day, Cartwright had his operating table moved outside, where the light was good. Sergeant De Groot explained to the boy that this was because the surgeon was always anxious about the quality of the light, always demanding that the lamp be brought closer to the wound. The Dutchman suspected it had something to do with a fear that his poor eyesight would let him down. However, his sense of grievance never did, and he aired that without restraint. He abhorred the common practice of old dressings being reused and the government’s failure to supply the soldiers with their own dressings, which forced them to bind up their wounds with dirty handkerchiefs or pieces of cloth torn from a sweaty shirt, since they knew no better.
As Jesse moved about the tent, he heard the surgeon lecturing anyone who would listen, including civilian representatives from Washington and their military escorts, uniforms aglitter with brass buttons and gold bullion. Governors and mayors and town clerks who offered a mechanical official smile to the medical staff spoke in platitudes at the sick and injured, while calculating how many more votes this flying visit would gain them during the next election, provided they ever got home, and if they didn’t, they had fathers and brothers and uncles who could vote. They never stayed long in the hospital tents, these visitors, but rushed through the tents like a dose of Dr. Fitzjohn’s Epsom salts.
Maybe it was the smell, or the sight of a man in the last throes of death, that drove them so quickly into the fresh air and sunshine of the Tennessee spring. Perhaps it was Dr. Cartwright’s badgering that plagued them like a particularly infuriating insect that would not be swatted or discouraged.
“Half the surgeons you send us don’t even have the dexterity to roll a damn bandage. What we need is men trained exclusively to nurse and attend the needs of the sick and injured. Not idiots, but a corps of medical orderlies—with a little intelligence,” he would shout, running after them. “You train men to shoot cannons, steer ships, but ride about on horses. Why don’t you train some of them to drive ambulance wagons, wound dressers, food preparers. Is that so crazy?”
Maybe not, but they thought
him
crazy.
Late one evening, as Jesse Davis sat in the hospital tent writing into the pharmacy ledger in his neat, clear script by the light of a candle, Cartwright swung his medical bag onto the table. He seemed always to be around the hospital tents, attending a patient, bent to some operation, or writing into that notebook he always carried, his free hand distractedly messing up his already untidy hair. Tonight he’d been making house calls, looking in on soldiers confined to their tents.
“Jacob taught you how to take inventory? Keep the records neat and tidy, fill out requisition forms in triplicate, list incomings and outgoings for medicines and supplies. One of these days, this army is going to choke on its paperwork. I guess you could look at it this way, if you make it through the war you’ll get a good job clerking in some dry goods store. Provided of course you’ve still got your arms.” He used his pipe stem to tap the long streams of “medicinals” flowing down the sheet of paper.
Silver nitrate, iodine, mercury pills, fluid extract of valerian, compound cathartic pills, morphine sulphate, tannic acid
—on and on went the list, more than fifty in number. “Shall I tell you something, Private, nearly all those so-called ‘therapeutic’ drugs are useless, a waste of time and space, not to mention money. Civilian suppliers make a nice little profit on other people’s pain. They sell the government all that goddamn rubbish—worse than rubbish—you can kill an entire army with only half the ingredients in that list. You ever heard of the Hippocratic oath? Hypocrites was a Greek physician, ‘The Father of Medicine,’ he lived
During the day, Cartwright had his operating table moved outside, where the light was good. Sergeant De Groot explained to the boy that this was because the surgeon was always anxious about the quality of the light, always demanding that the lamp be brought closer to the wound. The Dutchman suspected it had something to do with a fear that his poor eyesight would let him down. However, his sense of grievance never did, and he aired that without restraint. He abhorred the common practice of old dressings being reused and the government’s failure to supply the soldiers with their own dressings, which forced them to bind up their wounds with dirty handkerchiefs or pieces of cloth torn from a sweaty shirt, since they knew no better.
As Jesse moved about the tent, he heard the surgeon lecturing anyone who would listen, including civilian representatives from Washington and their military escorts, uniforms aglitter with brass buttons and gold bullion. Governors and mayors and town clerks who offered a mechanical official smile to the medical staff spoke in platitudes at the sick and injured, while calculating how many more votes this flying visit would gain them during the next election, provided they ever got home, and if they didn’t, they had fathers and brothers and uncles who could vote. They never stayed long in the hospital tents, these visitors, but rushed through the tents like a dose of Dr. Fitzjohn’s Epsom salts.
Maybe it was the smell, or the sight of a man in the last throes of death, that drove them so quickly into the fresh air and sunshine of the Tennessee spring. Perhaps it was Dr. Cartwright’s badgering that plagued them like a particularly infuriating insect that would not be swatted or discouraged.
“Half the surgeons you send us don’t even have the dexterity to roll a damn bandage. What we need is men trained exclusively to nurse and attend the needs of the sick and injured. Not idiots, but a corps of medical orderlies—with a little intelligence,” he would shout, running after them. “You train men to shoot cannons, steer ships, but ride about on horses. Why don’t you train some of them to drive ambulance wagons, wound dressers, food preparers. Is that so crazy?”
Maybe not, but they thought
him
crazy.
Late one evening, as Jesse Davis sat in the hospital tent writing into the pharmacy ledger in his neat, clear script by the light of a candle, Cartwright swung his medical bag onto the table. He seemed always to be around the hospital tents, attending a patient, bent to some operation, or writing into that notebook he always carried, his free hand distractedly messing up his already untidy hair. Tonight he’d been making house calls, looking in on soldiers confined to their tents.
“Jacob taught you how to take inventory? Keep the records neat and tidy, fill out requisition forms in triplicate, list incomings and outgoings for medicines and supplies. One of these days, this army is going to choke on its paperwork. I guess you could look at it this way, if you make it through the war you’ll get a good job clerking in some dry goods store. Provided of course you’ve still got your arms.” He used his pipe stem to tap the long streams of “medicinals” flowing down the sheet of paper.
Silver nitrate, iodine, mercury pills, fluid extract of valerian, compound cathartic pills, morphine sulphate, tannic acid
—on and on went the list, more than fifty in number. “Shall I tell you something, Private, nearly all those so-called ‘therapeutic’ drugs are useless, a waste of time and space, not to mention money. Civilian suppliers make a nice little profit on other people’s pain. They sell the government all that goddamn rubbish—worse than rubbish—you can kill an entire army with only half the ingredients in that list. You ever heard of the Hippocratic oath? Hypocrites was a Greek physician, ‘The Father of Medicine,’ he lived
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