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Oct. 24, 1777— Dr. Thatcher writes that the hospital is now overcrowded with officers and soldiers from the field of battle, those belonging to the British and Hessian troops are accommodated in the same hospital and receive equal care and attention. The foreigners are under the care and attention of their own surgeons. I have been present at some of their capital operations, and remarked that the English surgeons performed with skill and dexterity, but the Germans, with few exceptions, do no credit to their profession. Some of them are the most uncouth and clumsy operators I ever witnessed, and appear to be destitute of all sympathy and tenderness toward the suffering patient. No less than 1,000 wounded and sick are now in the city. The Dutch Church and several private houses are occupied as hospitals. We have above 30 surgeons and mates and all are constantly employed. I am obliged to devote the whole of my time, from 8 o’clock in the morning to a late hour in the evening, to the care of the patients. Some of our soldiers’ wounds, which had been neglected while on their way here from the field of battle, being covered with putrefied blood for several days, were found on the first dressing to be filled with maggots. It was not difficult, however, to destroy these vermin, by the application of tincture of myrrh. One wounded man, a young man, received a musket ball through the cheeks, cutting its way through the teeth each side, and the substance of the tongue, his sufferings have been great, but he now begins to articulate tolerably well. Another brave soldier received a musket ball in the forehead, between the eyebrows, observing that it did not penetrate the bone. It was imagined that the force of the ball being partly spent, it rebounded and fell out, but on close examination by the probe, the ball was detected spread entirely flat on the bone, under the skin which I extracted with the forceps. A barbarous feature of this warfare was the use of Indian allies. The wounded that fell into their hands were cruelly killed and scalped, frequently tortured as a preliminary. Thatcher relates a remarkable instance of recovery after scalping, “Among the most recent occurrences which came under my observation, the following is deserving of particular notice— Captain Gregg, of the New York Regiment, while stationed at Fort Stanwix, went with two soldiers into the woods to shoot pigeons. A party of Indians started suddenly from concealment, shot them all down, tomahawked and scalped them and left them for dead. The Captain finally revived, a faithful dog had licked his wounds, which afforded him much comfort. The dog ran to some men a mile away and by its actions induced them to follow it to where he lay. Captain Gregg was carried to the fort, where his wounds were dressed. He was afterwards removed to our hospital and came under my care. The unfortunate man recovered: Today a man would die from such immediately. November 18, 1777— Dr. Shippen says we are now stationed at considerable distance from the enemy at New York. We feel secure from the annoyance of the days of war, and military duty not being very urgent, our officers appear disposed to relax: they have adopted the practice of giving suppers, alternately, with music and dancing through half the night. These are the favorite amusements of the Virginia and Maryland officers. In the next February, Dr. Thatcher says, that having continued to live under canvas tents most of the winter, we have suffered extremely from exposure to cold and storms. Our soldiers have been employed five or eight weeks in constructing log huts, which at length are completed, and both officers and soldiers are now under some comfortable covering for the remainder of the winter. Log houses are constructed with the trunks of trees, cut into various lengths according to the size intended, and are firmly connected by notches cut at their extremities; in the manner of dovetailing. The vacancies between the logs are filled in with plastering consisting of mud and clay. The roof is formed of similar pieces of timber, and covered with hewn slabs. The chimney, situated at one end of the house, is made of similar but smaller timbers, and both the inner and outer side are covered with clay plaster to defend the wood against the fire. The door and windows are made by sawing away a part of the logs of a proper size, and move on wooden hinges. In this manner, have our soldiers, without nails, and almost without tools, except the axe and saw, provided for their officers and for themselves comfortable and convenient quarters, with little or no expense to the public. The huts are arranged in straight lines forming a regular, compact, uniform, village. The officers’ huts are situated in front of the line, according to their rank, The kitchens are in the rear. The ground, for a considerable distance in front of the soldiers’ huts, is cleared of wood, stumps and rubbish, and is every morning swept clean for the purpose of a parade ground, and roll call of the respective regiments. The officers’ huts are generally divided in to two apartments. They are occupied by three or four officers, who compose one mess. Those for the soldiers have but one room, and contain ten or twelve men, with their cabins (berths) filled with straw and one blanket for each man. January 23, 1778— Fort Moultrie, order by Lieut. Col. Marion— As long hair gathers much filth and takes a great deal of time and trouble to comb and keep it clean and in good order, the Lieut. Com. recommends to every soldier to have their hair cut short, to reach no further down than the top of the shirt collar, and thinned upwards to the crown of the head. Those who do not have their hairs in this mode must have them platted and tied up as they will not be allowed to appear with their hair down their backs and over their forehead and down their chins at the sides, which make them appear more like wild savages than soldiers. The major will please pick out three men to be regiment barbers who are to be excused from mounting guard or do fatigue: they are daily to dress the men’s heads and shave them before they mount guard. The men to pay them half a crown a week each man. Any soldier who comes on the parade with beards or hair uncombed shall be dry shaved immediately and have his hair dressed on the parade. There is not much written about battles in the south during the war because the biggest and most noted battles were in Boston and New York. Some mention of prisoners kept on boats is noted. Dr. James Brown, physician of the southern department makes a report from the principal hospital at Hillsboroough, North Carolina, Nov. 5, 1780. He complained that he had no supplies except a few blankets, no wine, but little sugar and spirits and no continental money. April 8, 1777— Congress fixed the pay for the various officers as follows: 1 Director General $6 a day and 9 rations; 3 deputy director generals at $5 per day and 6 rations. 1 intermediate assistant deputy director $3 a day and 6 rations. 4 physicians generals at $5 per day and 6 rations. 4 surgeons generals at $5 per day and 6 rations. 1 physician and surgeon general for each army $5 per day and 6 rations. Senior surgeon $4 per day and 6 rations. second surgeons $2 per day and 6 rations. surgeon mates $1.50 per day and 2 rations. apothecary general $3 per day and 6 rations. nurses 24/90 dollar a day and 1 ration. LOSSES DURING THE WAR— There is no complete death rate. There was a great death rate in the northern army during 1776 while the army of 1777 was remarkably healthy. We know there was much sickness, diarrhea and dysentery, typhus and typhoid, smallpox. There must have been other diseases which are not mentioned. Malarial fever was common, not only in the southern colonies but also at Lake Champlain. General Gates said that in the fall of 1776, the frost was the doctor that would cure the prevailing diseases. Smallpox was generally prevalent during the earlier years of the war, particularly in 1776 when thousands died from it. In later years this was less evident. The enforcement of inoculation and the large number of soldiers, who had been made immune either by this measure or by the disease itself, rendered the army as a whole little subject to attack of it. Throughout the war Typhus was the greatest. The crowding of soldiers in barracks, prisons and hospitals, lack of ventilation and ordinary sanitary precautions: insufficient or improper food all combined to make the deadly hospital or jail the most dreaded. The most pitiful feature of the three great diseases, typhus, smallpox and dysentery, was that thousands of cases were contracted in the hospitals. Many a fine fellow going to the hospital with some slight infection, there contracted smallpox or typhus and perished miserably. So often did this occur that the best writers of medicine in the military matters, agreed that military hospitals, on the whole, increased the mortality of armies. The wounded soldier who escaped the battle with his life and was obliged to run the gauntlet of a list of deadly diseases in some infested hospital. Fortunate if he escaped dysentery, smallpox, or the like, more soldiers died in Philadelphia during the winter of 1776/1777 than in all the battles of the war. Where bullets killed one, disease killed ten. The estimated deaths in 1776 were at least 10,000. During the following year the number was probably greater, but in later years there were probably not so many deaths. It must be remembered that the only deaths estimated were those who occurred in battle, in camp or in the army hospitals. There were many sick who went home. These men seldom returned and no record remains of the considerable number who finally succumbed to the protracted and exhausting diseases of the day. The British soldiers and Germans as well, had a special advantage over the colonists in the matter of susceptibility to infectious disease. The former at that time enlisted for a period of 21 years. The British army was made up largely of old and seasoned veterans who had passed through and survived the dangers of infections. Recruits also had the advantage of coming from large cities, where they were accustomed to conditions and had been exposed to most of the infectious diseases. The colonists, on the other hand, were for the greater part from country districts where they had lived in isolation. They had not come into contact with typhus, smallpox, and dysentery, or even the more common diseases such as measles. When these youths, fresh from the country, were crowded into hospitals, even barracks, and worst of all, in those chambers of death called military prisons, they were helpless prey of all the most fatal infections in their pernicious forms. The striking and important fact is that out of every five colonists who volunteered and went forth to battle for the freedom of his country, one died before the, year was out. These youths, who went out to defend their country, in nine cases out of ten perished miserably in some wretched hospital or prison pen. This is the story then, of two hundred and some years ago, and what disease is, to what it is today. A great difference, and a great has come to fight such disease so people don’t die from it. © Copyright 2010 by Mifflinburg Telegraph Weekly Newspaper Top of Page |
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