He could not sleep that night for fear his patients
who had not been scalded with the boiling oil would be poisoned by the
gunpowder conveyed into their wounds by the balls. To his surprise, he
found them much better than the others the next morning, and resolved
never again to burn his patients with hot oil for gun-shot wounds.
This was the beginning, as nearly as we can fix it, of that reform which
has introduced plain water-dressings in the place of the farrago of
external applications which had been a source of profit to apothecaries
and disgrace to art from, and before, the time when Pliny complained of
them. A young surgeon who was at Sudley Church, laboring among the
wounded of Bull Run, tells me they had nothing but water for dressing,
and he (being also doux de sel) was astonished to see how well the wounds
did under that simple treatment.
Let me here mention a fact or two which may be of use to some of you who
mean to enter the public service. You will, as it seems, have gun-shot
wounds almost exclusively to deal with. Three different surgeons, the
one just mentioned and two who saw the wounded of Big Bethel, assured me
that they found no sabre-cuts or bayonet wounds. It is the rifle-bullet
from a safe distance which pierces the breasts of our soldiers, and not
the gallant charge of broad platoons and sweeping squadrons, such as we
have been in the habit of considering the chosen mode of warfare of
ancient and modern chivalry.
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