Identifier: andersonvilles00mcel (find matches)
Title: Andersonville : a story of Rebel military prisons, fifteen months a guest of the so-called southern confederacy : a private soldier's experience in Richmond, Andersonville, Savannah, Millen, Blackshear, and Florence
Year: 1879 (1870s)
Authors: McElroy, John, 1846-1929
Subjects: Andersonville Prison United States -- History Civil War, 1861-1865
Publisher: Toledo : D. R. Locke
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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th dirt and filthand covered with vermin. When a gangrenous wound neededwashing, the limb was thrust out a little from the blanket, orboard, or rags upon which the patient was lying, and waterpoured over it, and all the putrescent matter allowed to soakinto the ground floor of the tent. The supply of rags for dress-ing wounds was said to be very scant, and I saw the most filthyrags which had been applied several times, and imperfectlywashed, used in dressing wounds. Where hospital gangrenewas prevailing, it was impossible for any wound to escape con-tagion under these circumstances. The results of the treatmentof wounds in the hospital were of the most unsatisfactory char- 312 AKDERSONYILLE. acter, from this neglect of cleanliness, in the dressings andwounds themselves, as ^Yell as from various other causes whichwill be more fully considered. I saw several gangrenouswounds filled with maggots. I have frequently seen neglectedwounds amono^st the Confederate soldiers similarly affected;
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THE GEAVEYAItD AT ANDEESONVILLE AS THE EEBEL8 LEFT IT.(From a Bebel photograpli in possession of the Author.) and as far as my experience extends, these worms destroy onlythe dead tissues and do not injure specially the well parts. Ihave even heard surgeons affirm that a gangrenous w^oundwhich had been thoroughly cleansed by maggots, healed morerapidly than if it had been left to itself. This want of cleanli-ness on the part of the nurses appeared to be the result of care-lessness and inattention, rather than of malignant design, andthe whole trouble can be traced to the want of the proper A STORY OF KEBEL MILITAEY PRISONS. 313 police and sanitary regulations, and to the absence of intelligentorganization and division of labor. The abuses were in a largemeasure due to the almost total absence of system, govern-ment, and rigid, but wholesome sanitary regulations. Inextenuation of these abuses it was alleged by the medical offi-cers that the Confederate troops were barely sufficient to

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