and generous appreciation of each other's work; let us eliminate every particle of envy at the success of others; let us heartily commend all who have enlarged the boundaries of our science or who have improved its art. Let us remember that the man who can appreciate what is excellent in others, is the man most likely to accomplish what is excellent himself.

Gentlemen of the Southern Association, let our motto be, lofty aim and united action. As Southern men, let us show to the world that, under changed conditions, we have still the stamina of our forefathers. As members of our beloved profession, let us strive to be first in scientific attainment, first in integrity, first in high purpose for the good of mankind.

Confederate Surgeons.

An Address before the Association of the Survivors of the Confederate Surgeons of South Carolina, at the Annual Meeting held at

Columbia, S. C., November, 1889.

BY F. PEYRE PORCHER, A. B., M. D.,

Surgeon to the Holcombe Legion, to the Confederate Hospital, Fort Nelson, Norfolk Harbor, and the South Carolina Hospital, Petersburg, Virginia.

Fellow Survivors of the Medical Departments of the Army and Navy of South Carolina:

MR. PRESIDENT,-It was a happy inspiration which prompted us to gather in this capital of South Carolina three years since to organize an association of the surviving surgeons of the separate departments of the army and navy. It partakes of the character of a Medical Cincinnati Society, which is right and proper, as it proposes to transmit to those of immediate descent, certain rights and privileges which have been dearly purchased.

If men were born free and equal, they did not long remain so— for distinctions very soon arose based on difference of conduct, of character, or talents. If your ancestors fought and bled, and gave their property or their lives freely for their country, whilst ours remained at home in inglorious ease, or were money-changers, and wholly devoid of patriotism, we must naturally expect that superior respect and position-other things being equal-should be accorded you, and, by virtue of a more honorable past, you should receive a

fuller recognition from society and the world. As Pinckney and Rutledge, Moultrie and Marion, Pickens, Gadsden, Sumter, Richardson, and Bratton left to their descendants a record of good birth, character and capacity, there was presumptive evidence that such superior hereditary qualities would be maintained. Can there be any doubt, also, that Hampton, Butler, Anderson and Kershaw; Gregg, Hagood, Evans, Bratton and Jenkins; McGowan, Elliott, Conner, Manigault, Aiken and Capers; Barker and Gaillard, McMaster and Haskell; the Wallaces, and

"Hundred others whom we fear to name,

More than from Argos or Mycenae came,"

must justly transmit to their descendants some of the fame which they so dearly acquired, and that the halo which surrounded their brows will not entirely disappear in the lapse of time.

So we hope to transmit to the descendants of the survivors, testimonials to the conduct and behavior of their proavi.

It is becoming and necessary that a record should be kept of what was accomplished in those four years of a most bloody and disastrous war, when responsible acts, often requiring the greatest personal coolness and courage, were performed by men of our profession, who had been wholly untrained in the art and requirements of actual warfare. It must be noted, also, that they quietly fulfilled the most arduous, delicate and responsible duties unaccompanied by the ordi nary expedients which are resorted to to incite and cheer the soldier ; they were men who it was not deemed necessary to stimulate by adventitious aids, by mention in the gazettes, by brevet ranks conferred, by commendations read at the head of regiments, or reports sent up to headquarters-when the battle ended and the records of victory or defeat were recited.

These

They stood in need of no such aids, artificial or natural. were the men who would only be referred to-if fate so willed it-in the list of casualties; and even in grave official histories of the campaigns, it is seldom that the presence, acts or the self-sacrifices of the medical staff would be recorded. In proof of which, since the war, we have seen no statement regarding the position, the conduct or the services of the medical department of the army in the great contest in which they played a most essential, if not the most conspicuous part.

Nor did they ask or expect fame, either present or posthumous. For conscious that, as members of a noble profession, the special

duties they were called upon to execute were of a high and exalted order, the approval of their immediate commander, the confidence of the sick or wounded-these, with the support of their own conscience, must be their supreme and only ambition.

With a sphere so limited, with reward so meagre and inadequate in comparison with those bestowed upon their military associates of similar or superior rank, we are now entitled to award them the highest credit for the unselfish performance of duty-whether done within the walls of a hospital, to the sick or wounded soldier in his quarters, or, as was often the case, in the face of the enemy, surrounded by danger and death, and equally exposed with the private soldier to shot and shell and to death-dealing missiles from those "instruments of precision"-as they were called-which sped with "damnable iteration," the

"leaden messengers

That ride upon the violent speed of fire."

And your speaker is fully warranted in rendering this tardy justice, as he cannot claim to have fully participated in the special exposures which you encountered.

To prove the devotion and the heroism of the surgeon and his youthful assistants, we would briefly recall some scenes which occurred at Petersburg, Va., near the close of that period when the beleaguered town was being shut in by a cordon of earthworks, crowned with batteries belching forth their bolted thunders, the lines of the enemy were being pressed in closer and closer, the fire of every species of armament was converging upon that devoted centre, and the roar of cannon and the detonation of small arms "would deafen you to hear." So incessant was the cannonading from some quarter of the heavens, and so great the roar of artillery, that it seemed to the doomed city that a battle was almost constantly in progress.

The surgeons and assistant surgeons, the generals and the officers lived with their men in the open fields, in trenches swept by the fire of the enemy, literally in ditches and holes burrowed in the earth, half filled with water-from which they were sometimes in the rainy season driven out like rats. Half starved, upon the coarsest food, in cold and storm and rain, exposed to every hazard—these, our brethren of the medical department, quailed not; they patiently submitted to every hardship, often with systems shattered by privation and illhealth, whilst they performed services which required skill, care and serene courage.

No extended reference can be made here to privations endured in

prisons; and more than one example exists of voluntary surrender by surgeons in order that they might not be separated from their sick and wounded.

Even those in the comparative shelter of hospitals-especially those placed near to the immediate theatre of the war, had by no means light duties to perform, nor were unexposed to the dangers of the battlefield whilst in attendance upon the sick and wounded. They also were quite within range of shot and shell. Shells passed frequently over the South Carolina hospital at Petersburg. One struck within a few feet of the fourth ward, another entered the ninth, and a third passed through one of the tents provided to relieve the hospital-over-crowded with the sick and wounded. Before it became no longer tenable and was evacuated, the surgeon had to distribute the amputations-including also two resections of the shoulderamong his five assistants; and the whole of three entire days and nights, without cessation, were required to complete the work.

Batteries like Wagner, it is no exaggeration to say-were ofttimes wrapped in a gloom more sulphurous and fiery than that of Phlegethon or of Tartarus-made more terrible by the crash of those bolts of steel, impelled with vengeful fury, which rained upon them by day and by night. The defence was so desperate and destructive that the troops and their medical attendants had to be frequently relieved. Sumter, Mobile and Vicksburg were scarcely more endurable.

These facts are mentioned to show some of the reasons which justify us in recalling at our annual meeting the events of the past; that our associates and those who come after, may know how the medical department comported itself in the trials of that great and bloody war, which to many of us in memory seems now but a dream of the past.

In our opinion no sufficient tribute has ever been paid to the matchless organization of the medical department of the Confederate army as presented by the surgeon-general's office; and we regret that more has not been said and earlier, in order that before the death of that incomparable officer, Surgeon Samuel Preston Moore, he may have learned how much his services were esteemed. A native of Charleston and a man trained in the army, with all its ideas of discipline, its rigidity and its formality, he may have contracted certain habitudes which deprived his manners-not of the repose "which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere," for of that he had enough and to spare-but of that softness and suavity which are used. in representative democracies and in all non-military communities.

Within his domain, which was a very extensive one, he had absolute power and the fiat of an autocrat; the Emperor of the Russias was not more autocratic. He commanded and it was done. He stood in terrorem over the surgeon, whatever his rank or wherever he might be from Richmond to the trans Mississippi, and to the extremest verge of the Confederate States. And though appearing to be cold and forbidding, we do not think that Surgeon Moore was cruel, arbitrary, or insensible to conviction. We have ourselves experienced some of his stern rulings, which were afterwards fully compensated for.

But where, or under what government so complicated and extensive as this, was there ever a department of the public service characterized by such order and precision? Every paper emanating from that office was a model of despatch and neatness; and the chief introduced various measures for the relief of the medical department when the country was suffering privations, and in want of the ordinary necessaries of life. It will be remembered, also, that included. in the sphere of his duties was the providing the medical supplies needed for the entire army-which had to be imported in great measure; and the hospitals and other branches of the service were fairly supplied with quinia, morphia, iron, chloroform and surgical appliances.

If the writer is permitted to say it here, the hospitals at Norfolk and Petersburg under his care were never allowed to be without these essential articles-which were purchased when needed by private contributions from friends in Charleston.

But that we may avoid the imputation of being indiscriminately a laudator temporis acti, we think there were some grave mistakes committed. One of the most serious was the failure to send surgeons of known skill and experience into positions where they might do most good-into the field or into large hospitals-in place of permitting them to remain in high cathedral places as medical examiners, medical directors, in charge of stations for purveying and distributing medical supplies, etc. Surgeons of the first ability were appointed to these offices-doubtless of importance-but which could have been filled by others fully competent who had not devoted their lives to surgery. It seems strange that men, just at the period when their special capacities could be applied to the greatest advantage, were indeed absolutely demanded by the exigency, were diverted from the branch in which they were particularly proficient to such peaceful pursuits, whilst the assistant surgeon, sometimes the full