An online guide to the collection is available.]]>An online guide to the collection is available.]]>
]]>An online guide to the collection is available.]]>An online guide to the collection is available.]]>An online guide to the collection is available.]]>An online guide to the collection is available.]]>An online guide to the collection is available.]]>An online guide to the collection is available.]]>An online guide to the collection is available.]]>An online guide to the collection is available.]]>An online guide to the collection is available.]]>An online guide to the collection is available.]]>An online guide to the collection is available.]]>An online guide to the collection is available.]]>An online guide to the collection is available.]]>An online guide to the collection is available.]]>An online guide to the collection is available.]]>An online guide to the collection is available.]]>An online guide to the collection is available.]]>An online guide to the collection is available.]]>An online guide to the collection is available.]]>
There is no particular class of wounds, injuries, or diseases, for which pensions are granted. It depends not so much upon the wound, injury, or disease itself, as upon the disabled condition arising therefrom. A soldier may have been sunstruck and now be troubled with vertigo, heart disease, or nervous debility, or contracted rheumatism, lumbago, neuralgia, camp diarrhea or a cold which has developed into a serious throat or lung trouble; his confinement as a prisoner-of-war may have developed scurvy with its attendant horrors; indeed, his army service may have been the direct or indirect cause of almost any known disease. He may have become ruptured (or "breached") from overstraining; or incurred varicose veins from long and rapid marches; or become partially or entirely deaf; or he may have been wounded, or lost a finger or other member, or received other injuries, either external or internal. In short, it may be said that anything in the nature of a wound, injury, or disease, which impairs a man's usefulness as a member of society, or materially disables him for the performance of manual labor, entitles him to a pension under the law. The disability arising therefrom may be slight, and yet a rating can be had.]]>Harvard Medical Library Rare Books Collection (P.5619). View the online catalog record.]]>View the online catalog record for the Zabdiel Boylston Adams papers.]]>View the online catalog record.]]>View the online catalog record.]]>An online guide to the collection is available.]]>
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Robert Ware died of pneumonia at Washington, North Carolina, on April 10, 1863.
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Fill up the regiments then, and let not Massachusetts be behindhand in sending her quota of troops ... "]]>An online guide to the collection is available.]]>
I was captured by six rebel soldiers, sent to Andersonville, and there kept until the fall of Atlanta made it necessary for us to be removed to prevent falling in the hands of the Union forces. I was taken to Charleston, S.C., with others, and placed by the enemy under fire of our soldiers and gun-boats; remained here ten days and was taken to Florence, S.C., where we passed the winter of '64-5, and on or about February 15th I was stricken down by an attack of swamp-fever, and for three weeks I remained in a delirious condition; the fever abated and reason returned. I soon learned from the surgeon, after a hasty examination, that I was victim of scurvy and gangrene and was removed to the gangrene hospital. My feet and ankles, five inches above the joints presented a livid, lifeless appearance, and soon the flesh began to slough off, and the surgeon, with a brutal oath, said I would soon die. But I was determined to live, and begged him to cut my feet off; telling him if he would do that I could live. He still refused; and, believing that my life depended on the removal of my feet, I secured an old pocket-knife (I have it now in my possession) and cut through the decaying flesh and severed the tendons. The feet were unjointed, leaving the bones protruding without a covering of flesh for five inches. At the close of the war I was taken by the rebs to our lines at Wilmington, N.C., in April 1865, and when weighed learned that I had been reduced from 165 pounds (my weight when captured) to forty-five pounds. Every one of the Union surgeons who saw me then said I could not live; but, contrary to this belief, I did, and improved. Six weeks after release, while on a boat enroute to New York, the bones of my right limb broke off at the end of the flesh. Six weeks later, while in the hospital on David's Island, those of my left hand had become necrosid and broke off similarly. One year after my release I was just able to sit up in bed, and was discharged. Twelve years after my release my limbs healed over, and strange to relate, no amputation has ever been performed upon them save the one I performed in prison. There is no record of any case in the world similar to mine. My own theory of the cause, is this: while delirious I was so weak that the pulsations of my heart were too feeble to throw the blood to the extremities, and below the point of circulation death took place.
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Late in life, he published a memoir of his experiences with particular attention to medical care and diseases of soldiers during the Civil War. Johnson himself was troubled with chronic diarrhea over a six-year period and here describes some of the similar afflictions suffered by his comrades.]]>View the online catalog record.]]>View the online catalog record.]]>View the online catalog record.]]>View the online catalog record.]]>View the online catalog record.]]>View the online catalog record.]]>View the online catalog record.]]>View the online catalog record.]]>View a digitized version of another edition of this work.]]>View the online catalog record.]]>View the online catalog record.]]>
to Fanny [Ware].]]>
Robert Ware died of pneumonia at Washington, North Carolina, on April 10, 1863.]]>
]]>View the online catalog record.]]>View the online catalog record.]]>View a portion of the collection online.]]>View the online catalog record.]]>View the online catalog record for the author's papers.]]>View the online catalog record.]]>View the online catalog record.]]>View the online catalog record.]]>View the online catalog record.]]>
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Verso: "In commemoration of the great central fair for the U.S. Sanitary Commission held at Philadelphia, June 1864."]]>
Verso: "Soldiers' fair, Dec' 1864. Springfield, Mass."]]>
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"As we were standing there, a shell came through one man and then exploded, taking my right arm off, and killing four of my comrades, making five lives destroyed and one wounded. I never expected to get home or even off the field, but I was bound to do all I could... I was at this time one mile from any surgical assistance, and walked that distance, while the blood was fast leaving me, notwithstanding I had bandaged the arm as tight as possible.... I was so weak as to be unable to walk, or hardly stand.... I had not long to wait before the surgeon came along, and at my earnest request, I was taken to the amputating room and placed on the table. This is the last that I remember until my arm was amputated. After I had fully come to my senses, I was conducted back to my bed on the ground, and there I remained during the night with my bloody clothes on."]]>View the online catalog record.]]>
The cover of this poem states, "The author of this book lost his arm in the discharge of his duties as Machinist on board the Demaly while conveying troops from Galloup's Island to City Point, Va."]]>View the online catalog record.]]>
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Robert Ware died of pneumonia at Washington, North Carolina, on April 10, 1863.]]>View the online catalog record.]]>View the online catalog record.
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After the George Dedlow tale, Mitchell published a popular article in Lippincott's magazine entitled Phantom limbs in December, 1871, but it is not until the following year, in Injuries of nerves and their consequences, that he published his findings for the medical community.]]>View the online catalog record.
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I write this to send by a waggon train that is going to Rappahannock Station tomorrow morning. They might just as well send us too if there was any one to take the responsibility of it but the comfort of 100 or so wounded men is sacrificed to red tape. My wound is in the right arm just below the elbow. It is getting along first rate. I don't think the bone is injured at all. Lt. [Charles] Longfellow is wounded just below the shoulder blades. The bullet went in below one shoulder blade & came out below the other, just grazing the spine. He is rather stiff but is in excellent spirits & is getting along finely. Lt. Merrill of our regt. has just been brought into the hospital. He was wounded in the leg today. The rebs charged through our camp it seems. I shall direct this to you or Mr. Longfellow in Washington for I suppose [one] or both of you will be there by the time this gets there. A telegram was sent to you day before yesterday. I don't know how long it will be before the medical authorities will stir themselves, but I don't think it can be many days for they will soon have more wounded than they can take care of here, I think. I hope you like this specimen of left-handed penmanship.]]>View the online catalog record.]]>View the online catalog record.]]>View the online catalog record.]]>View the online catalog record.]]>View the online catalog record.]]>
"Your committee, therefore, are constrained to say that they can hardly avoid the conclusion, expressed by so many of our released soldiers, that the inhuman practices herein referred to are the result of a determination on the part of the rebel authorities to reduce our soldiers in their power, by privation of food and clothing, and by exposure, to such a condition that those who may survive shall never recover so as to be able to render any effective service in the field."]]>View the online catalog record.]]>
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