The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1898-08-15
CARING FOR SICK SOLDIERS
GREAT LACK OF WILLING
HANDS AND FACILITIES.
Extracts From Letter Written By
Nurse Stationed at a General
Hospital Near Washington.

| Editor Herald: The following ex-
tracts from a private letter of a nurse
who is stationed at a general hospital
within sight or almost within sight of
the dome of the capitol at Washing
ton, dated early in August, speak for
| themselves:
I'VE do not have half enough good,
willing hands, and it is next to impoS-
sible to get things to work with. I'm
agine us, if you can. one or two trained
nurses, with 20 typhoid fever cases,
and one sponge and perhaps six towels
to wash them all, and one tumbler to
take their milk out Of There is abSo-
lutely nothing to be had for wash rags
and not one-tenth enough clean cloth
ing to keep their beds decent.
Combs are unknown among the
men in the hospital, and delicacles for
them to eat when convalescing are al
most as rare.
1.-THE food is coarse and often poorly
cooked, and cooked for everybody just
the same. We need all sorts of COM
mon appliances and conveniences for
the Sick
Such a condition of affairs might
have found some excuse early in May,
and might have been possible during
the corrupt political Cameron admins
tration of the war department in the
early days of the gigantic war of the
rebellion, when Lincoln was obliged,
for political reasons, to make the in
terests of the nation subservient to the
interests of a corrupt clique, whose in
fluence had been so purchased at the
nominating convention. But as soon as
he dared President Lincoln sent the in
efficient rotten secretary to st. Peters,
burg. Does anyone believe that such
condition of affairs as above portrayed
could have existed six weeks after
Stanton took the helm? When we COM
pare the United States of today, with
its 100000 people, fighting Spain, with
the northern states in 1861, with 100000
600, fighting the southern confederacy,
and consider the difference in the sit
uation. the war with Spain has been
mere incident. And the administra-
ton of the commissariat and medical
departments has been disgracefully in
efficient and incompetent. 1t is said of
Napoleon the Great that his success in
the field was not more due to his gen.
ius for handling troops in battle than
to his wonderful mastery of details,
which enabled him always when it was
within the compass of human ability to
keep his troops supplied with those
things necessary TO their highest eff
cheney.
What stronger evidence of the
shameless incapacity and inefficiency of
the administration of the war depart
ment could be found than the fact that
four months after the war began hos
pitals lying within cannon shot of
Washington are wanting in the COM
monest and most Indispensable articles
Of hospital supplies. which if supplied
at all, are obtained by the women of
the country begging them from door to
door. When it became evident that war
was at hand the president should have
posted conspicuously over the entrance
to the war department:
Wanted A Head-No blighted brig
adler or fourth-rate politician, however
rich, need apply
The war is over, and just criticism is
now permissible. O.