The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1897-02-12
WAR "REMINISCENCES.
WHERE HAD JOHN eEENq
Strange Effect of q Wartime Wound on
Negro.

Strange Effect OF q Wartime Wound on
Negro.
After the battle of Bull Run. when
the whole country was holding up its
hands in dismay and breathing hard in
the first realization that the war was
not, after all, to be picnic Cor the north
ern troops. l, together with many other
doctors and surgeons. rushed into Wash
ingtOn from distant cities. was taken,
one rainy night, by kind old negro wom-
an to her cabin on the edge of the city
| She came TO me in tears. "Doctah, dies
wisht yoh come an see my John. He
| pears mon's'ous curious. an he act des
like he 'stracted."
At her cabin l found her son. ire
mendous fellow, as black as coal and evil
IDENTITY an athlete, with no evidence of
wound upon him, but with tendency to
bear off to one side as he walked, an ar-
parent inability to talk, and possessed
of persistent effort to march and keep
time to martial music, which he could
not do.
Aunt Martha, as she called herself,
and asked me to call her. told me that
her son had always been strong and
healthy, and that when he left Wash
ington with the army be was perfectly
sound and "des like de res of de folks;
but dey fetch him back To his po' ole
nanny DIES like yoh see him, doctah,
an l des skeered plumb outen my wits,
dat 1 is l examined John carefully
and could find not the least thing the
matter with him. and half believed he
was shamming.
The room was whitewashed, and no. |
ticed streak entirely around it that was
so evenly drawn that it attracted my at !
tention; but in the stirring events of
those days really paid scant heed to so
trifing a case as Johns, and so nppar
emily trivial an indication as was that |
level streak on the wall. His mother
was still talking. "De reason dat all de
table an cheers is in de floor, doctah, is
dat John he des runs inter all of 'em il
dey close + de wall. Pears like he des
'bleeged t skim along close up a. eber
he kin. Dat dar streak is whar his
elbow scrapes along all day an all night,
'cep' when somebody's sittin' holdin'
his ham er feelin' his pulst, like yoh is
now" Young and inexperienced as I
was. even this did not give me clew.
and 1 left Aunt Martha and John after
giving some trifljng advice and remedy.
both of which knew to be wholly in
nocuous.
l spent several years in Paris and in
Germany after the war, and it WIS not
until 1885, that / was back in Washing
ton. We had an internationl conven-
ton there at the time, and were taken
to various public institutions. among
which was little asylum for poor and
insane negroes.
In one room, as we were passing the
door, | happened to observe on the
wall a well-worn streak
drawn so level and circling the room SO
perfectly that it called to my mind
vision which 1 had wholly forgotten
Memory was coming back to me and
slowly taking up the threads of the war
days, when one of the resident physi-
clans, who had missed me and returned,
said, as he joined me at the grated door.
Strange case. He has been like tha:
for years. No one knows why. He is
perfectly harmless, perfectly helpless as
to taking care of himself, and he walks
and walks, day and night, and always
Gears to the left. If we let him out he'd
bear off to the left and go in-the river