printed in one of the publications of the United States Sanitary Commission.

These wounded, with their fellow sufferers on the other side, were sent to improvised hospitals in Dalton, Rome, Kingston, Atlanta, Augusta, and other places in Georgia. Surgeon Jones says of the hospitals in Augusta:

"Upon my return to Augusta the Confeedrate hospitals were found crowded with wounded from the bloody field of Chickamauga. One thousand and fifty sick and wounded soldiers, about nine hundred of whom were recently wounded, were sent from the battlefield to Augusta. The majority of the wounds were slight and of the extremities. The battle was fought September 18-20th and the wounded were not received in Augusta until the 26-28, or from eight to ten days after the reception of the wounds. Not only were these soldiers much crowded in the cars and without proper dressing and attention to their wounds during the tedious journey of near three hundred miles, but many of them lay out in the depot with little or no attention to their wounds for from forty to eighty hours after arriving at Augusta. (These were Confederate wounded.)

"The hospital accommodations were wholly inadequate to the proper treatment of this number of wounded, and they were crowded into houses and churches the hygienic conditions and arrangements of which were defective.

"Thus the Second Georgia Hospital, with a capacity of 165, received 273. The Third Georgia Hospital, with a capacity of 130, received 221 (and so on). The capacity of the Presbyterian Church was only 112, nevertheless 240 wounded were crowded into it; the pews were not removed, the seats were converted into bunks and the wounded men laid in the pews. The capacity of the Catholic Church was only 50, yet it received 130 wounded.

"Hospital gangrene appeared first in the Presbyterian Church, a few days after the crowding of the wounded into it. Not a single wounded soldier escaped hospital gangrene in this building. The disease next appeared in the Catholic Church, and here also the wounded were all attacked. And finally the wounded of the Second and Third Georgia Hospitals were visited and a number of cases terminated fatally." This epidemic of gangrene doubt

less began in the dirty box cars that had been used in transporting wounded for months. It was probably spread by the attendants who went from patient to patient with the same sponge.

We have the report of Surgeon Moses that there were five cases of tetanus in the hospitals at Chattanooga, but neither erysipelas nor gangrene. This seems remarkable, but the better class of surgeons during the Civil War clearly understood that gangrene was violently contagious.

They isolated all cases and treated the disease with bromine and the strong mineral acids. Surgeon Jones believed "That hospital gangrene, smallpox, scarlatina, measles and similar diseases are communicated not only by actual contact, but also by the transmission of an effluvium from the original source of infection through the medium of the air."

Let us return to Chattanooga.

Bragg advanced to a position on Mission Ridge and Lookout Mountain and blockaded the city. Wheeler got in the rear and played havoc with the supply trains running back to Bridgeport. The Autumn rains came and the roads became all but impassable. Rations grew scarcer and scarcer. The troops were all put on half rations, and even those sometimes failed. Surgeon John Moore says that for several days corn in the ear was issued as bread rations.

Medical Director Perrin's report pictures the conditions at this time. "As the roads became more and more difficult by reason of the rains, only those subsistence stores that were absolutely essential could be brought up, and even those were soon reduced in quantity far below the standard ration. The country on the north side of the river had been gleaned of everything in the way of vegetables. Every effort was made to secure for the wounded enough food from the regular ration, including soft bread; but in the absence of vegetables and other delicacies they exhibited but too plainly the sad evidences of deficient nutrition. A want of fuel was also felt during the latter part of October and November. It was very discouraging to the medical attendants to witness the gradual but certain decline of patients who should have recovered, while they felt themselves powerless to apply the proper remedy."

Toward the latter part of October about fifteen hundred sick and wounded were in the hospitals at Chattanooga. Starvation had reduced the animals to such a point that no ambulance transportation could be organized; there were not even horses for the guns. Things looked very dark when Grant arrived and reinforcements began to come in. Then the aspect changed. Hooker opened up the cracker line to Bridgeport, supplies were brought up in great quantities, and the wounded evacuated to the rear.

This line was opened on October twenty-eighth. The wounded were all sent north except some two hundred of the gravest cases, not suitable for transportation. The hospital across the river was broken up, more permanent hospitals established in Chattanooga, and preparations made for the next battle, which was now at hand. But that is another story.

The events of Chickamauga have been narrated; much more could be written, for the reports are unusually full and complete, more so than for any other of the great battles of the war. I hope that enough has been set down to give a tolerable idea of the various elements and phases of this great battle, as seen from the point of view of a medical officer.

LOSSES.

The losses at Chickamauga were, I believe, more severe in proportion to the numbers engaged than in any other of the great battles of the War. This battle is unique also in that the Confederate loss in killed and wounded was decidedly greater than that of the Union forces, being over sixteen thousand Confederates to less than twelve thousand Union. This was due to the facts that the Confederates had more troops on the field and that they were the attacking party, the other side fighting on the defensive, and largely under some kind of cover.

The loss in the infantry was one-fourth of those engaged. And there were no reserves held back as at Antietam; save for one brigade of Granger's Corps every brigade and regiment on the field was engaged, and the losses of many were remarkable. Steedman's reserve division in three hours lost 1,787 out of 3,900. The regular brigade of Baird's Division, fighting desperately on both days, lost seventy-five per cent of its strength in killed and

wounded. Brannan's Division, fighting mostly without cover, lost 1,977 in killed and wounded and had but 214 missing. Many regiments lost half their strength. The Eighth Kansas, for example, lost fifty-five per cent in killed and wounded, practically all on the afternoon of the first day's fight.

The cavalry loss as usual was small; forty killed and one hundred and twenty wounded; total, one hundred and sixty, out of ten thousand present; or about one and six-tenths per cent.

The ratio of killed to wounded is given as one to six. This indicates that many reported as missing were either killed or mortally wounded, which was undoubtedly the case. The killed probably numbered over two thousand; the wounded amounted to nine thousand eight hundred. The total of killed and wounded in the two days at Chickamauga amounted to about four-fifths of the killed and wounded in the two days' battle in the Wilderness, where the infantry and artillery engaged were quite twice as

numerous.

Most of the medical officers making reports commented on the slight nature of the wounds. This was partly due to the fact that the gravely wounded of necessity remained on the field. Yet the wounds as a whole were probably not so grave as in many other battles, for the reason that in the wilderness of Chickamauga the Confederates were not able to make much use of their artillery. In reading the memoirs of surgeons of the war one is continually impressed with the gravity of shell wounds. These were the wounds that baffled, even terrified the surgeon; the wounds from which he turned away in despair.

COMMENTS.

Before criticizing the work of the Medical Department in this campaign it is only just to consider the words of the Medical Director, Surgeon Grover Perrin, U. S. Army.

"When it is remembered that the Battle of Chickamauga was fought at a long distance from the base of supplies, in a region already gleaned of resources and difficult of access, that it was lost, and that the army was subsequently cooped up with but one outlet by a circuitous and difficult route of fifty miles in length, it may be safely asserted that the obstacles to be overcome in the