XV.

The United States Sanitary Commission*-How it started, what it intended to do, and how it has been done.

SOME brief account of the Commission should come into this book, for three good and satisfactory reasons. First, the country knows very little about the matter. It has gone along too quietly to jostle itself into notoriety, and it has been too busy with its great work to cultivate ostentation. Thank God that science never takes one step backward,—that humanity never retrogrades! Second, the objects of this Commission should be more fully known to our people. Blood and carnage have ruled the hour: the people of this nation and other nations have stood gazing in blank amazement at this wild drama, with no time to think of any thing

When the suggestion of a General National Sanitary Commission was presented to the President, he authorized it at once, and clothed the Commission with all necessary authority. It was too convincing to need arguments, and too plain to need illustration. This prompt response was one of the most striking proofs that the wisest action of a really free nation comes from the heart of its people. The President not only acted quickly, but wisely. The men he appointed commanded the confidence of the country; and they command it in a still higher measure to-day:— The Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D., New York; Prof. A. D. Bache, LL.D., Washington; George W. Cullum, U. S. A., Washington; Alexander E. Shiras, U. S. A., Washington; Robert C. Wood, M.D., U. S. A., Washington; William H. Van Buren, M.D., New York; Wolcott Gibbs, M.D., New York; Samuel G. Howe, M.D., Boston; Cornelius R. Agnew, M.D., New York; Elisha Harris, M.D., New York; J. S. Newberry, M.D., Cleveland; George T. Strong, New York; Horace Binney, Jr., Philadelphia; The Right Rev. Thos. M. Clark, D.D., Providence, Rhode Island; The Hon. Joseph Holt, Kentucky; R. W. Burnett, Cincinnati; The Hou. Mark Skinner, Chicago; Frederick Law Olmsted, New York.

but the great strife itself. Third, this Commission has moved sanitary science ahead.

It is too early yet to determine the boundaries of its conquests. But it is safe to say that it has inaugurated in its own field a far better system than had ever existed before in any country. It has come up from what Lord Bacon so well denominated the source of all power,-the bosom of the people.

One evening, as nearly as I can learn, Rev. Dr. Bellows, and some other gentlemen, in a pleasant réunion in a private room in New York, discussed a plan which, under the sanction of their great names and through the indefatigable labors of these pioneers ever since, has resulted in the formation and superstructure of one of the most beneficent and glorious institutions in the world.

The founders did not contemplate in the beginning the achievement of impossibilities. They undertook to do what should be done,-what it was right to do,-what was needed; and they did it at the right time. It has been a practical working machine. Its objects were to make modern sanitary science become the handmaid of the rifled cannon; to cure by the matchless agencies of humanity and learning as fast as gun-makers could mangle; to save all unnecessary loss of health or life; to improvise means of rescue and recovery; to improvise hospitals on the battle-field; to send the disciples, and sometimes the apostles, of the laboratory, the scalpel, and the kitchen, to every camp, and, through the smoke of embattled hosts, to bring away in Good-Samaritan arms the wounded, the helpless, and the dying; to lead the van and press the rear of every corps; to advise about the location of camps, the best régime for an army's diet and clothing, the personal habits of soldiers, and the proper cooking of their food:-in a word, how the patriot soldier may, with all the appliances of science and humanity, be able to do his full duty to his country before he falls in her cause or returns with honors to his home.

Such were the objects of the Sanitary Commission; and these objects they have quietly and successfully accomplished even beyond their best hopes. Some illustrations are needed to show these points more specifically. Let the Commission speak for itself.

FIRST. ITS ORGANIZATION AND DUTIES.

In their first report to the Secretary of War (December 9, 1861), the Commission says:—

"SIR-By direction of the Sanitary Commission, I respectfully submit the following report of its operations since its appointment by you, on the 9th of June, 1861, pursuant to the recommendation of the Acting SurgeonGeneral, under date of May 22, 1861.

"By your order appointing the Commission, it was vested with no legal authority, and with no power beyond that of 'inquiry and advice in respect of the sanitary interests of the United States forces.' It was directed especially 'to inquire into the principles and practices connected with the inspection of recruits and enlisted men, the sanitary condition of the volunteers, to the means of preserving and restoring the health and of securing the general comfort and efficiency of troops, to the proper provision of cooks, nurses, and hospitals, and to other subjects of like nature.'

"The Commission has from the first fully recognized the fact that its office was purely auxiliary and advisory, and that it was created solely to give what voluntary aid it could to the Department and the Medical Bureau in meeting the pressure of a great and unexpected demand on their resources."

In a circular (October 22, 1862) for general information, they more minutely unfold their objects. These are stated

to be to

"1. Maintain constant inspection of camps for the dissemination of intelligence regarding the prevention of sickness.

"2. Maintain the preparation and distribution of short but thorough medical and sanitary papers for the guidance of medical and other officers. "3. Relieve the wounded on battle-fields, by supplying them with condensed food, stimulants, and means of preserving life, as at the battle of Antietam, when twenty thousand dollars were expended in a few days.

"4. Keep a corps of experts in constant circulation in all our hospitals, reporting defects, correcting evils, and doing their utmost to alleviate the radical sources of suffering.

"5. Maintain the machinery for collecting and distributing the supplies furnished by the homes of the land,-a business of great labor, expense, and wide agencies.

"6. Afford special relief at our various homes' for sick and wounded men who are in transitu from camps and hospitals.

"7. Make the general wants and condition of sick and wounded men a constant study, and strive, by influences on Government, on Congress, and the public, to secure such new laws, or general orders, or to make such a public opinion as will induce constant improvement in their condition."

And still further :

"The plan of the Relief Service of the Sanitary Commission is"1. To secure, as far as practicable, reserves of hospital and ambulance supplies, in order to be prepared to act with efficiency in emergencies.

"2. To cover in its work, as far as practicable, the whole field of the war, dispensing supplies wherever most needed, to all in the service of the Union, without preference of State, arm, or rank, army or navy, volunteer or regular.

"3. To study the whole field, by means of carefully selected and trained medical inspectors, in order to determine where supplies are most needed, and to watch against their misuse.

"4. While administering to all pressing needs of the suffering, to carefully avoid relieving the officials in charge in any unnecessary degree from their responsibility, but to do all that is possible to secure his full rights to the soldier unable to help himself.

"5. To cordially co-operate, as far as practicable, with the hospital service of the Government, endeavoring to supplement, never to supplant it."

SECOND. THE NECESSITY FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SANITARY COMMISSION, AND WHAT IT HAS DONE.

"A large percentage of the disease and weakness of our armies up to this time (in other words, the waste of many millions of our national resources) has been due to the inexperience of medical and military officers alike as to the peculiar dangers and exposures that surround the soldier in camp and on the march, and which render the money the nation has expended in putting him into the field a far more precarious investment than it would be were he kept under strict subjection to sanitary laws. The liability of soldiers to disease should be far less than it is. It would be so were they required to observe the laws of health. They and their officers, and the people and the Government, have thus far too generally overlooked those laws. But the last twelve months have taught the army and the people the immense importance of sanitary science in

war.

"Our school has been costly, but it has already taught us much. For the last three months, thousands and thousands of wan and wasted forms brought North by railroad and on hospital-transports, stricken by no rebel bullet, but by far deadlier enemies of the nation,-malarial fever and camp-dysentery,-have been impressing on the people the lesson the Sanitary Commission has been endeavoring to teach ever since the war began,-viz.: that our soldiers were in far greater danger from disease than from the violence of their enemies, and that we lose ten men uselessly by preventable disease, for every man destroyed by the enemy."

The dreadful battle of Fair Oaks gave the Commission a full opportunity to test its usefulness and efficiency. In a letter from Mr. Olmsted, Secretary to the Commission, dated "Sanitary Commission Floating Hospital, Tender Wilson Small,' White House, June 10, 1862," he says,

"During the week since the engagement of Fair Oaks, more than four thousand have passed through our hands, -half this number having been taken away on the transports of the Commission. Scarcely the slightest provision had been made for them, except on these transports; and when they were not at the landing, the weight of care for the sustenance and comforting of the poor wretches sent in from the field by railroad, during the time they necessarily remained here, fell almost wholly on those of the Commission's agents who were not at the time detailed to either of the transports. Messrs. and were among these; and the protracted severity of the labor which they willingly undertook would have been possible only under the influence of the belief that lives depended on the last exertion of their energies, strained to the utmost, and that with men to whom the saving of life became a passion."

It was utterly out of the power of the medical staff of the army to meet so frightful an emergency; and had it not been for the timely provisions of the Commission, Heaven alone knows how few of those four thousand men would have been saved!

Again, July 4, 1862, in speaking of the operations of