Chapter XVI

CASES AND PATIENTS.--MARTIN DILGER.--HEAVY LOSSES.--FRENCH IRRELIGION CONTRASTED WITH GERMAN PIETY.

As it is my object to exclude as much as possible professional details of my labours at the bedside, description of wounds, and the like, I shall again merely mention particulars of a few cases, in order to give my reader a general idea of the nature of the wounds received by soldiers in battle.

Take No. 6, for instance, as I find it in my notes. It was a very bad case. A German soldier of the Line had received a bullet wound behind and below the calf of his leg, which passed up, without touching the bone, behind his knee joint, beneath the muscles of the thigh to the joint of the hip. Having pursued this most extraordinary course, it lodged so deep beneath the muscles that neither the German doctors nor ourselves, to whom the case was handed over, could find the exact position of the bullet; yet I laid open its track in four or five places. Despite all treatment, he died eventually of blood-poisoning. On making a post-mortem examination, I traced the bullet actually into the abdomen, and still was unable to find it, although certain of its general position. These particulars I mention to show the unaccountable course a bullet may take after entering an extremity. There were dozens of similar curious cases, for which this may suffice as an example.

In another instance the bullet, having entered the right thigh and fractured the bone, carried along with it, impacted in its centre, a splinter of this bone, and pieces of the tunic and lining, as well as of trousers and shirt. It then entered the left thigh, lodging close to the skin on the outer side, from which I extracted the different fragments in the order just described.

By this time we had evacuated the large shed, which was now only occupied by those who suffered from pyæmia, or blood-poisoning. All the rest had comfortable quarters in different portions of the building; but these unfortunates were doomed to remain in the shed, though exposed to the biting frost and bleak winds of November. The simple reason was that their presence under the same roof with their comrades would mean certain death to all. When they had contracted this dread disease, which they chiefly did by infection, their only chance,--and a poor one it proved,--was to be placed in a current of fresh air. Hence their removal to this shed was commonly but their first step to the deadhouse.

This plague of the Field Hospital made great havoc amongst our men during the month of November in Orleans, as it had done at Sedan in September. The only instance of recovery after it, which came under my notice during the whole campaign, was that of the Bavarian named Martin Dilger; and his was of a very bad type. His thigh had been amputated; and, when the symptoms set in, I sent him out to the shed, where he quickly became as bad as his comrades. I attended him several times every day; but he speedily grew worse, until at last, his case seemed more desperate than all the others. The soft parts sloughed, leaving the thigh-bone protruding; while the patient was almost comatose, and had that violent hiccough which is generally, in such cases, the forerunner of death. Several of my fellow-surgeons, moved by feelings of humanity, advised me not to put him to the useless pain and annoyance of dressing his stump, since he was _in articulo mortis_, and his recovery beyond the range of possibility. However, I resolved that while he lived, I would do as much for him as possible; and I continued to dress his wounds.

Dilger had prolonged and repeated rigors, followed by profuse perspiration, and was generally of a bluish livid colour,--all symptoms of most deadly omen. I gave him as much brandy as he could take, and chloral every two hours, for the hiccough, which was so violent that it shook not only his whole frame, but the bed on which he lay. Yet, in a few days these rigors subsided; he opened his eyes, and became conscious. In the face of such a decided improvement, I ventured the opinion that he would recover. He was now taking immense quantities of brandy, which was supplied from the stores, and broth which I had made for him in the town. Under this treatment his wounds took on a healthy action, his pulse and temperature came down, and rational speech returned, instead of his low muttering delirium; my colleagues now admitted that his recovery was possible. I suffered him to remain in the shed, as I felt that his safety depended upon having him there. Some suggested his removal into a warm comfortable room in the town. Indeed, it was with difficulty that I turned a deaf ear to these suggestions, and overcame my own inclinations, when, on going to visit him on a cold November night, I heard the wind whistling through that goods store in the most melancholy manner, and the rain coming pitter-patter through the holes in the roof. Nevertheless, in this cave of Æolus he outlived all the others, and found himself at last its sole occupant.

This was my first case of pyæmia at Orleans, but it was to be quickly followed by many more. A Black Hussar, in the first-class waiting-room, developed it in a most virulent form, and died in twenty-four hours. That frightened me very much, and I trembled for the safety of the rest. So I had my wards washed out with a strong solution of carbolic acid immediately. What made me still more apprehensive was the awful fact that, out of seventeen patients in a neighbouring ward, all hitherto going on favourably, fourteen died in a very short time of this dreadful scourge. In spite of my precautions, I found a few days subsequently that one of my patients had severe rigors, followed by perspiration; and bitter was my disappointment to see a case which had been going on splendidly, almost even to complete success, suddenly turn to the bad in a few hours. I had my man at once removed to the shed, and, as I well remember, on a biting November night; but I had no choice. I would have put him out on the road-side, rather than have allowed him to sow the seeds of inevitable death amongst the rest of my patients.

The poor fellow had now plenty of company in his dismal quarters, for my colleagues had sent just as many out there as I had.

Not three days afterwards, a bright, handsome, fair-haired lad of about twenty, with a quick, piercing eye, and manly countenance, showed also the dreaded premonitory symptoms. I said nothing to him, but asked the Hospital sergeant to get two of his men and have him removed on a stretcher to the deadhouse. Such I can only call the place from which none that entered it came out alive, except in the single instance I have quoted. Shall I ever forget the moment when the _infirmiers_ came, and that poor young lad, looking me wistfully in the face, read his doom in my silence? He knew what it meant. He had seen his comrades go, and had learned their fate, which was so soon to be his own. A few days later, I lost a fourth,--a good, pious fellow, who was continually telling his beads. His name was Johann Krum, particulars of whose case have been already given. He was a man that never smiled; and when I discovered that he had left a wife and three children at home, I pitied him greatly.

I am thankful to say that this was the last of my patients who succumbed to pyæmia. Any others whom I lost died from shock, hemorrhage, or the severity of their wounds.

The days went on, until we had reached the second week of November. Skirmishes with the enemy,--that is to say, with the French, who were advancing upon Orleans,--now became an everyday occurrence; and the number of wounded that came straggling in meant a very considerable loss to the Bavarians.

About this time, Dr. Pratt made a journey to Versailles, in quest of stores and money, leaving Dr. Tilghman in command. Inspector-General Nussbaum made several visits to our Hospital, and expressed himself greatly pleased with the way in which it was conducted. The truth was that nobody could teach our veteran Americans anything new in the management of a Field Hospital. They had all served their time during the four years of the American War, and under a system of military medical organisation which, as all authorities acknowledge, they had brought to perfection. This was the secret of the undoubtedly successful career of our Ambulance. And I must not omit to observe that it was they who introduced the anterior suspension splint for fractures and wounds of the joints, which we were the means of having adopted in many of the German Hospitals.

To turn for a moment, before the Germans evacuate Orleans, to a subject on which their presence and behaviour often set me thinking. It was a fine sight when the Bavarians heard Mass in the great Cathedral, to mark them fully equipped in heavy marching order, as they stood in close military array in every available portion of the church, with sabres drawn, glittering helmets, and waving plumes. The officers, too, stood with drawn swords during Mass; and at the Elevation they gave, in their deep sonorous tones, the word to present arms. Altogether the spectacle, though not calculated to inspire devotion, was most impressive.

The Bavarians are, as a rule, good Catholics, and large numbers of them were to be seen at daily Mass, reading their prayers attentively, and going up to receive Communion. In the Hospitals also, they showed the same devout temper. Their Chaplains were zealous men, always at work among them, sharing their fatigues, and seeing that they attended to their religious duties. One of the infirmarians in the ward next to me, a common soldier, was in Holy Orders, though not yet a priest; and a more saintly young fellow I never met. He was light-hearted and merry, had a pleasant word for every one, and fulfilled punctiliously the duties devolving upon him as a soldier, and as a minister of religion. In this matter, as in other things of less importance, the Bavarians struck me as very unlike the French. When you saw a French soldier in church (which was but seldom), he never seemed to utter a prayer. And I feel bound to set down my experience, that so long as I was among them, I never noticed a French soldier with a prayer-book; nor did I ever hear one pray when dying. Others may have been more fortunate; but such was the fact in my case, and I think it deplorable. But the average French citizen appears to think nothing at all of religion.

Far otherwise was it with the Bavarians. And I have seen large numbers, also, of the Prussians and North Germans, who belonged to the Evangelical or other Churches, reading their prayer-books and their Bibles in the Hospitals, and praying earnestly as a matter of course. These manifestly had religious convictions; they served God with zeal and courage according to their lights. But in France the decadence of religion had been complete. No wonder, therefore, if she has fallen. Such, indeed, was the judgment of Europe a few months later, when the Commune, breaking out like a volcano, startled men from the Voltairean lightness which, during too many years of frivolity and thoughtlessness, had been the fashion. For a moment all were agreed in proclaiming the necessity of a return to the beliefs and practices of their Christian forefathers,--was it, perchance, too late?