rbarous than to bring a severely wounded man
back four or five miles to the hospital in a crowded, jolting army
wagon, let him lie from two to four hours with hardly any protection
from the blazing sunshine in the daytime or the drenching dew at night,
rack him with agony on the operating-table, and then carry him away,
weak and helpless, put him on the water-soaked ground, without shelter,
blanket, pillow, food, or drink, and leave him there to suffer alone all
night. And yet I saw this done with scores, if not hundreds, of men as
brave and heroic as any that ever stood in a battle-line. It might not
have been so,--it ought not to have been so,--but so it was; and in that
hospital there were no means whatever of preventing it. The force of
surgeons and hospital stewards immediately available was altogether too
small to attend properly to the great number of wounded thrown suddenly
upon their hands, and no men could be spared to look after the wretched
and suffering soldiers in the grass whose wounds had been treated, when
there were a hundred more who had not even been looked at in twenty-four
hours, and who were lying in a long, closely packed row on the ground,
awaiting their turns at the operating-tables. When a litter-squad had
carried a man away into the bushes, they had to leave him there and
hurry back to put another sufferer on a table or bring another from an
ambulance or army wagon to the operating-line. Instead of the force of
five surgeons and about twenty stewards and attendants with which the
hospital began work on Friday, there should have been a force of fifty
surgeons and at least two hundred stewards, attendants, and
stretcher-bearers, so that they might have been divided into two
watches, or reliefs, working and resting alternately. As it was on
Friday, five surgeons and twenty attendants had to take care of the
wounded from three whole divisions. They were reinforced by five more
surgeons and perhaps twenty more attendants Friday evening, but even
this force was so insufficient and inadequate that at midnight on
Saturday one of the highest medical officers in the camp said to me:
"This department is in a state of complete collapse."

In nothing were the weakness and imperfect equipment of the hospital
more apparent than in the provision made--or rather the lack of
provision--for the care of wounded after their wounds had been dressed.
It seems to have been expected that, when injured men were brought