FEBRUARY 23, 1863:
Walt
Whitman writes to The New York Times about
the deplorable conditions in the Union’s military hospitals, which are often
barely better than its POW camps:
“The military
hospitals, convalescent camps, &c. in Washington and its neighborhood
sometimes contain over fifty thousand sick and wounded men. Every form of
wound, (the mere sight of some of them having been known to make a tolerably
hardy visitor faint away,) every kind of malady, like a long procession, with
typhoid fever and diarrhœa at the head as leaders, are here in steady motion.
The soldier's hospital! Many things invite
comment, and some of them sharp criticism, in these hospitals. The Government,
as I said, is anxious and liberal in its practice toward its sick; but the work
has to be left, in its personal application to the men, to hundreds of
officials of one grade or another about the hospitals, who are sometimes
entirely lacking in the right qualities. There are tyrants and shysters in all
positions, and especially those dressed in subordinate authority. Some of the
ward doctors are careless, rude, capricious, needlessly strict. . . .”
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