Hospital tent

“ But at length we remember the hospital tent, and the hospital steward produces a piece of white something from his stores, which is bound around a stick and made into a flag.
Under circumstances such as these, the doctor climbs into the ambulance, I mount my horse, and we start. The rain somewhat abates, and diminishes to a drizzle, which is a great relief; but the ambulance drags along snail-like through the mud. We, who are mounted, do not ride faster than a walk, yet repeatedly have to wait, and watch it crawling after us among the trees. ”

“ At daybreak on the morning of December 15th the Field Hospital was already astir. While it was yet dark the silence of the camp was broken in upon by the rousing of the orderlies, by much slapping upon the sides of silent tents, by much stumbling over darkened tent ropes, and by sudden calls of "Get up, you chaps," "Tumble out," "Chuck yourselves about." "Why don't you wake a man up?" cries out one peevish voice among the recently roused. "Why don't you make a noise?" says another in sleepy tones. "Is the whole camp afire and is the Boers on us, or is this your idea of calling a gentleman?" ”

“ We know that So-and-so has had a sprain, that such a man is in trouble with his digestion, that Hill has a fallen arch, and that Homans has terribly blistered his feet and is these days riding on the trucks, poor devil. Those who have met at the hospital tent have a common interest. Thus getting acquainted, we hail each other when we meet in the street, stop at each other’s fires, compare notes, congratulate on recovery, sympathize. There are, too, the recognized jokers, men who are always looking out for a chance to make a hit. And finally camp news is handed along from man to man. ”

“ A hospital tent without any fly constitutes my apartment and furnishing. And here it is one o’clock, damp and cold, one little fellow from the 11th Maine dying, whose groans have echoed through the camp for hours. ”

“ Instruments sterilised in advance permit the surgeons to commence to operate three hours after having received their orders to establish the hospital tent. Other tents can be established to the number of five. A hundred wounded persons can thus be taken care of and treated in the open country. Reserve ambulances can be called upon in case of need. As soon as operated upon, and out of immediate danger, the wounded, in the majority of cases, can be evacuated to permanent hospitals further back in the rear. ”

“ There are large tents furnished for hospital purposes, which will [Pg 25] accommodate from twenty to twenty-five men. These tents are usually put up in the most pleasant and shady part of the camp; the inside is nicely leveled, and board floors laid, if boards can be procured, if not, rubber blankets are laid down instead. Sometimes there are straw ticks and cot bedsteads furnished, but not in sufficient quantity to supply all the hospitals. Along each side of the tent the sick are laid, on blankets or cots, leaving room to pass between the beds. ”

“ Such a beautiful hospital it is. It is in tents, on a bit of sloping ground looking south. There are big tents for the patients, and little tents for the staff. I pull my bed out of the tent every night, and sleep outside under the stars. Such lovely starlight nights we have here. Dr. Alice Hutchison is head of this unit, and I am here on a visit to her. My own hospital is in a town—Kragujevatz. Now, I wonder if you can find that place? The hospital there is in a girls’ school. Now—I wonder what will happen to the lessons of all those little girls as long as the war lasts? ”

“ I desire to specially call attention to the kindness of Miss Boardman, of the Red Cross Association, for her active co-operation. Through her efforts hospital tents were furnished along the line of march and at the fireworks. These tents were thoroughly equipped with appliances for the First Aid treatment of the sick and injured, and also two Red Cross nurses were on duty at each tent as long as the same was in commission, as well as two being constantly in attendance night and day at the Union Station and four at the Pension Office. ”

“ About 20 motors full of Belgian officers passed us.
The camp is getting on well. All the Hospital tents are pitched, and all the quarters except the Sisters and the big store tents for the Administration block are ready. The operating theatre tent is to have a concrete floor and is not ready.
The ground is the worst part. It is a very boggy hay-field, and in wet weather like Wednesday and Tuesday they say it is a swamp. We are all to have our skirts and aprons very short and to be well provided with gum-boots. ”

“ Then we had three large hospital tents, holding about thirty-five each, a large camp-meeting supply tent, where barrels of goods were stored, and our own smaller tent, fitted up with tables, where jelly-pots, and bottles of all kinds of good syrups, blackberry and black currant, stood in rows. Barrels were ranged round the tent-walls; shirts, drawers, dressing-gowns, socks, and slippers (I wish we had had more of the latter) , rags and bandages, each in its own place on one side; on the other, boxes of tea, coffee, soft crackers, tamarinds, cherry brandy, etc. ”

“ By the help of this, and a stick in the other hand, I made a shift to go out of the tent; but, not being very expert at the use of the crutch, as I was going out one day, the tent cords catched the lower end of it, and I fell down, with the wounded leg undermost. This was to me a serious accident; for my wound immediately began to get worse, and in a few days it was greatly inflamed, and discharging black matter. I was then removed to the hospital tents, to be near the surgeon. ”

“ Surgeon General Watson, hospital commandant, took me through the quarters; there was quite a town of sick men; they lay in wall-tents—about twenty in a tent,—and there were daily deaths; those that caught the fever, were afterwards unfit for duty, as they took relapses on resuming the field. The tents were pitched in a damp cornfield; for the Federals so reverenced their national shrines, that they forbade White House and lawn to be used for hospital purposes. Under the best circumstances, a field hospital is a comfortless place ”

“ Twelve men may manage to sleep in a tent, but it is quite impossible that they can simultaneously dress there. Not, indeed, that any of the tents contained their full complement. Some had slung their blankets like hammocks upon the trees; others were content to roll themselves in their rugs, and sleep upon a waterproof-sheet under a bush; and besides this there was a hospital-tent, and as there are no sick, some of the officers were drafted off into this. ”

“ Again, the glare of light through the single calico tent was too much for the eyes of many. Medical men then came in contact with many a case in which they could afford but little benefit, and it was soon seen that unless some shelter could be afforded the helpless digger, death must be the natural consequence. There was no lack of money, for the doctor was hardly inside the tent-door before the fee was tendered, but a golden aid could not cure dysentery. The subject of an hospital had engaged the attention of several of the benevolent, but at that time it seemed a formidable undertaking. ”

“ The men's affair is to establish such rules among comrades as that no one shall stop up air-holes, or overcrowd the place with guests, or taint the air with unwholesome fumes. In the British army, bell-tents are not allowed at all as hospital tents. Active, healthy men may use them in their resting hours; but their condemnation as abodes for the sick shows how pressing is the duty of ventilating them for the use of the strongest and healthiest.
A sound and airy tent being provided, the next consideration is of bedding. ”

“ She and Miss Hall occupied for themselves and their stores, a double hospital tent, and let the weather be what it might, she was always at her post in the hospitals promptly at her hours, and dispensed with a liberal hand to those who needed, the delicacies, the stimulants, and medicines they required. She had made a flag for her tent by sewing upon a breadth of [291] calico a figure of a bottle cut out of red flannel, and the bottle-flag flew to the wind at all times, indicative of the medicines which were dispensed from the tent below. ”

“ It is needless to say that the operation-tent is very unlike an operating theatre in a London hospital, but then the open veldt is very unlike the Metropolis. The floor of the tent is much-trodden grass, and, indeed, much-stained grass, for what drips upon it cannot be wiped up. There are no bright brass water-taps, but there is a brave display of buckets and tin basins. Water is precious, more precious than any other necessity, for every drop has to be brought by train from Frere. ”

“ Clothes were being got together; helpless men were being dressed; blankets were being rolled up, and such comforts as the hospital could provide were being packed for the wounded to take with them on their journey. Cherished possessions were being dragged out from under pillows, to be safely disposed in a haversack or a boot. The grey light fell upon orderlies in their shirt sleeves bustling from tent to tent; upon piles of provision cases and of forage which were being turned out; upon heaps of stretchers; upon the rolled-up kit of the Army Medical Corps men ”

“ The populace hailed the announcement that tents would be erected for the sick in the desert, with applause from a thousand voices. The deputies chosen to superintend the task set to work at once, and by night the most destitute were safe under the first large hospital tent.
The old man settled some other important questions in the same way, always appealing to the lore of the ancients. ”

“ But military despots pick up their families and carry them out to their dinner, if they refuse to walk. The new neighbors offered us a room with them, but the General never left his men, and it is superfluous to say that I thought our clean, new hospital tent, as large again as a wall-tent, and much higher, was palatial after the trials of the pine forests. ”

“ We have now a good regimental hospital, admirably arranged in a deserted gin-house,—a fine well of our own within the camp-lines,—a ful-allowance of tents, all floored,—a wooden cook-house to every company, with sometimes a palmetto mess-house beside,—a substantial wooden guard-house, with a fireplace five feet "in de clar," where the men off duty can dry themselves and sleep comfortably in bunks afterwards. We have also a great circular school-tent, made of condemned canvas, thirty feet in diameter, and looking like some of the Indian lodges I saw in Kansas. ”

“ The nurses are usually very kind to the sick, and when off duty in the hospital, spend much of their time in digging drains around the tents, planting evergreens, and putting up awnings, all of which add much to the coolness and comfort of the hospital. Draining the grounds is a very important part of hospital duty, for when those terrible [Pg 26] thunder-storms come, which are so frequent in the south, it is morally impossible to keep the tent floors from being flooded, unless there are drains all around the tents. ”

“ Unless we seize time as it passes, it is apt to pass us by. We immediately pitched a bell tent at the outer edge of the hospital encampment, on the roadside, improvised a notice board from an old packing case, and, with the help of an interpreter, wrote, in Serbian, words to the effect, that if folks would bring their own bottles, medicine and medical advice would be given gratis. A doctor, a nurse, and an interpreter took charge of the tent dispensary, and we waited with eager curiosity to see what happened. ”

“ As few should be sent to the brigade or division hospital as possible, for the men always receive better care with their own regiment than with strangers, and as a rule the cure is more certain; but when men receive disabling wounds, or have sickness likely to become permanent, the sooner they go far to the rear the better for all. The tent or the shelter of a tree is a better hospital than a house, whose walls absorb fetid and poisonous emanations, and then give them back to the atmosphere. ”

“ In the very large courtyard a tent operating-hospital was established. The white attendants were waiting within in the pallid obscurity, among tables, glass jars, and instruments. The surgeon’s wagon, with hot-water and sterilising apparatus, was waiting without. The canvas organism was a real hospital, and the point about it was that it could move off complete at twenty-five minutes’ notice and set itself up again in any other ordained location in another twenty-five minutes. ”

“ Wounded men who made their way down on foot eight miles over the rough, hilly road will never know just how their strength held out. Others were brought down in army wagons by [Pg 138] the load, as few ambulances were at hand. Fortunately, there were some tents here that had been used by troops before going to the front. Under these hay was spread and covered with blankets, and the improvised hospital was ready. One tent was taken for operating-tables, and the work of surgeons and nurses began. They worked night and day for forty-eight hours, with only brief intervals for coffee and hard-tack. ”

“ And the Southwest has worked out an ideal system of treatment for tuberculosis patients. They are no longer housed in stuffy hotels and air tight, super-heated sanitariums. Each sanitarium is now a tent city—portable houses or tents floored and boarded halfway up, with the upper half of the wall a curtain window, and a little stove in each tent. Each patient has, if he wants it, a little hospital all to himself. ”

“ The best emergency hospital is the tent hospital, where the patient may obtain fresh air for twenty-four hours and receive sunlight by being hauled out into the company streets during the day. Wooden shacks or lean-tos (like those used in T. B. treatment) , the walls of which may be raised by hinges and pulleys to admit the air and sunlight, are excellent. Buildings without balconies or porches should not be used unless there is adequate room or window space. Open air schools are almost ideal; next to them are modern high schools with large grounds about them. ”