The Better Angels of Our Nature (6 page)

Cartwright ran between the tightly packed cots and grabbed hold of the orderly, who was trying to make a quick getaway. “
You
gave him the salt pork after I told you not to—”

“I thought I was doin’ the right thing, Doc, he said as how he was hungry—and he ate it, didn’t he?” wailed the misbegotten orderly, trying to wriggle out of the doctor’s clutches.

“I ought to choke the life right out of you—you lousy little cretin.”

“Please, Doctor—let him go, sir, let him go.” Sergeant De Groot spoke these placating words. He eased the surgeon’s hands from the orderly’s coat, telling the still-struggling soldier, “Go back to your regiment; you are no use to us. We don’t want you here. Go away.”

“Let me shoot him!” Cartwright was shouting; he still had the rusty Colt in his apron pocket and now shook it aloft. “Just one good shot! I’ll aim low, I swear, I’ll just
cripple
the little bastard.”

The orderly fled as if his clothes were on fire.

“Okay, okay.” Cartwright turned to his steward. “I’m calm as a cadaver.” He went back to Sergeant Drum’s cot and asked the astonished boy, “Do you want a transfer to the medical department? We have a sudden opening for an orderly.”

Jacob De Groot was Dutch by birth but “American by inclination and patriotism,” he told Jesse proudly. Twelve years old when his parents came to America, this soft-spoken giant from Minnesota showed Jesse how to accomplish many chores that were needed around the hospital. Easy ones at first—how to empty a bucket so that the urine did not stain his uniform, how to rub lemon juice into his hands to kill the smell of excrement on his skin, the art of rolling bandages on a winding machine like a small clothes wringer without getting the cloth twisted. Graduating to difficult tasks such as changing a sheet with the patient lying helpless in his own body waste, how to use a field tourniquet, judge the seriousness of a fever, recognize stomach cramps, ague, read the symptoms of diarrhea and dysentery. He wore his hospital steward’s insignia with pride, explaining to the boy that its yellow-piped green half-chevrons and caduceus represented the winged staff of a Roman deity called Mercury. Whenever the boy saw the steward, his coat and sky-blue pants were clean and brushed, his shirt freshly laundered, his fingernails always short and clean, his black hair and beard washed, and he never appeared outside the hospital without his kepi.

Apart from the surgeons, the boy learned, the stewards were the only men permanently attached to the medical department. The orderlies came and went, the only rule being the more ability that they showed as nurses, the more quickly they were reassigned to their old regiments. While the slow and the lazy remained. Every surgeon had a steward appointed to assist him, but Sergeant De Groot wasn’t just
any
steward, he was Dr. Cartwright’s steward. He assisted at operations, sometimes administering anesthetic when another surgeon wasn’t available, and as Cornelius had said, the trusted steward wore the key to the pharmacy chest on a string around his neck, and possessed a practical knowledge of its contents, allowing him to prepare and dispense what the surgeon had prescribed. He pulled teeth too, his great strength a distinct advantage when it came to restraining a victim squirming in agony with a swollen jaw. He was proficient in the application of bandages and dressings, and could, when called upon, apply “cups” and “leeches,” though, as he swiftly explained to the boy, he
was
never called upon, for Dr. Cartwright did not approve of their use, for any reason. He was also a good cook, and as far as was humanly possible, kept the young surgeon, whom he very obviously loved, from strangling irresponsible, indolent orderlies, stubborn surgeons, and visiting dignitaries.

Though the other surgeons helped themselves to whiskey from the hospital medical supplies, Dr. Cartwright did not, Jacob stated with fierce pride. Dr. Cartwright liked drink a little too much, it was true, but would sooner have suffered the hell of delirium tremens than touch the patients’ alcohol.

During the day, Cartwright had his operating table moved outside, where the light was good. Sergeant De Groot explained to the boy that this was because the surgeon was always anxious about the quality of the light, always demanding that the lamp be brought closer to the wound. The Dutchman suspected it had something to do with a fear that his poor eyesight would let him down. However, his sense of grievance never did, and he aired that without restraint. He abhorred the common practice of old dressings being reused and the government’s failure to supply the soldiers with their own dressings, which forced them to bind up their wounds with dirty handkerchiefs or pieces of cloth torn from a sweaty shirt, since they knew no better.

As Jesse moved about the tent, he heard the surgeon lecturing anyone who would listen, including civilian representatives from Washington and their military escorts, uniforms aglitter with brass buttons and gold bullion. Governors and mayors and town clerks who offered a mechanical official smile to the medical staff spoke in platitudes at the sick and injured, while calculating how many more votes this flying visit would gain them during the next election, provided they ever got home, and if they didn’t, they had fathers and brothers and uncles who could vote. They never stayed long in the hospital tents, these visitors, but rushed through the tents like a dose of Dr. Fitzjohn’s Epsom salts.

Maybe it was the smell, or the sight of a man in the last throes of death, that drove them so quickly into the fresh air and sunshine of the Tennessee spring. Perhaps it was Dr. Cartwright’s badgering that plagued them like a particularly infuriating insect that would not be swatted or discouraged.

“Half the surgeons you send us don’t even have the dexterity to roll a damn bandage. What we need is men trained exclusively to nurse and attend the needs of the sick and injured. Not idiots, but a corps of medical orderlies—with a little intelligence,” he would shout, running after them. “You train men to shoot cannons, steer ships, but ride about on horses. Why don’t you train some of them to drive ambulance wagons, wound dressers, food preparers. Is that so crazy?”

Maybe not, but they thought
him
crazy.

Late one evening, as Jesse Davis sat in the hospital tent writing into the pharmacy ledger in his neat, clear script by the light of a candle, Cartwright swung his medical bag onto the table. He seemed always to be around the hospital tents, attending a patient, bent to some operation, or writing into that notebook he always carried, his free hand distractedly messing up his already untidy hair. Tonight he’d been making house calls, looking in on soldiers confined to their tents.

“Jacob taught you how to take inventory? Keep the records neat and tidy, fill out requisition forms in triplicate, list incomings and outgoings for medicines and supplies. One of these days, this army is going to choke on its paperwork. I guess you could look at it this way, if you make it through the war you’ll get a good job clerking in some dry goods store. Provided of course you’ve still got your arms.” He used his pipe stem to tap the long streams of “medicinals” flowing down the sheet of paper.
Silver nitrate, iodine, mercury pills, fluid extract of valerian, compound cathartic pills, morphine sulphate, tannic acid
—on and on went the list, more than fifty in number. “Shall I tell you something, Private, nearly all those so-called ‘therapeutic’ drugs are useless, a waste of time and space, not to mention money. Civilian suppliers make a nice little profit on other people’s pain. They sell the government all that goddamn rubbish—worse than rubbish—you can kill an entire army with only half the ingredients in that list. You ever heard of the Hippocratic oath? Hypocrites was a Greek physician, ‘The Father of Medicine,’ he lived around
400 B.C.
and wrote an oath. ‘I will prescribe regimen for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do any harm to anyone.’ To this day medical students have to recite that oath when they graduate.” Cartwright snatched the pen from the boy’s inky fingers and scratched, “First of all, do no harm” across the page. “You know what that means? It means if you can’t do any damn good then at least do no harm.” He tossed the pen onto the pristine page, spraying it with ink spots. “Mercurous chloride and blue mass rots away your insides. Tartar emetic? Even worse, take enough of it and you’ll shit your guts out in a bloody pile. Who knows what’s in half this stuff? Pour them into the Tennessee, that’s what I say and hang the bastards who peddle them. All we really need is morphine and opium for pain control, chloroform and ether for anesthetics, and quinine for fevers. And let’s not forget those universal cure-alls, those pathways to oblivion—the stimulants, God bless ’em—brandy, gin, rum, and my personal favorite, whiskey.”

He produced a small flat bottle from his hip pocket, removed the stopper, swallowed a mouthful, and announced with a grin, “Of inestimable value, to patient
and
surgeon. Most therapeutic. Guaranteed to restore the balance of bodily fluids and replace black bile with good humor.” He tapped himself on the shoulder. “Doctor, you are a genius, sir, I feel better already. Just two or three more doses of that invigorating tonic and I’ll be right as a four-dollar bill. See, alcohol sharpens my senses. Helps me focus and not that I have to explain myself to you, but just in case you’re wondering, I was off duty about three hours ago.” He laughed. “I’m lying. I won’t be off duty for another ten years. What do you think, Private Davis, since you’ve no doubt discussed this with your close personal friend General Sherman, is ten years about right for the duration of this madness?”

The boy wisely refrained from telling him that, only last evening, while hanging about outside the Ohioan’s tent, he had heard the general express a view that they were facing “a thirty years’ war.” Instead, he went back to his work, beginning a new page and carefully copying from the screwed-up, bloodstained sheets of loose paper Jacob had given him.
Barrels of old linen—20, Bedpans—32, Blankets—106, Crutches—120 pairs, Splinting/Dressing plaster—10 rolls, stockings, shirts cotton, shirts woolen, bed ticks, pillows, tin cups—

“Coffins.” Cartwright tapped the page belligerently. “Don’t forget the coffins. We can never get enough coffins. Order enough for the entire army! We’ll need ’em all.” Cartwright ceased his haranguing and stared at the boy’s full mouth and at that funny-shaped nose, dusted with freckles that spilled out across his too-smooth cheeks. Something about the boy, his quiet dignity, his refusal to be drawn into an argument, needled and irritated him. No one
that
young should be that self-contained, that self-confident, it was—well, it was unnerving, that’s what it was, and brought out the worst in him. He leaned over the table, purposely obscuring the list of items that were to be transferred from paper to ledger.

“I don’t know why Jacob’s taken such a liking to you. In my opinion you’re too damn clever for a farm boy.”

“I never said I was a farm boy.”

“No, you never said anything. You just turn up here one day, no company, no regiment, and old Jacob just accepts you like some long-lost little brother. Cornelius thinks you’re a Rebel spy.” Cartwright was smiling that twisted smile.

The boy answered with a tolerant smile of his own as the surgeon picked up one of his small hands and examined it. “Soft. You’re well educated. Maybe you’re from some Quaker community? No, you don’t talk all thees and thous—” He opened his medical case and began to check the contents as he spoke. “The female Quakers make good nurses, they do what’s expected without complaint, not like those dragons from the Sanitary Commission, always poking their long noses in where they ain’t wanted. I’ve got nothing against nuns either, you have to respect how hard they work, but Christ almighty you need ’em to keep a dressing on a hemorrhaging wound and there they are, down on their bony old knees, praying. Between purging and purgatory a patient ain’t got a goddamn chance.”

The boy was looking with interest at the interior of the surgeon’s case.

“It was my father’s,” Cartwright proudly explained. “He took an ammunition box, stripped out the interior and lined it with elastic strips, you know, like a lady’s garter belt?—to hold the bottles, instrument cases, and just about anything else a surgeon would need in the field. You can strap it to a saddle and the contents won’t fall around inside and break.”

“Was your father a surgeon, sir?”

“A damn fine surgeon and a damn fine man. I’m just a damn fine surgeon. Not that being a fine man made any difference. When he died this case was all he had in the world to bequeath to his son and heir.”

“I’m sure your father believed that being a fine surgeon had its own rewards.”

“What would you know? And here’s some free advice—” Which Jesse did not get the benefit of since at that moment Lieutenant Nash, another young surgeon, came into the tent, looked around, and was about to depart again. Cartwright said, “If you’re looking for the patients’ whiskey supply I’ve locked it away.”

Nash’s eyes alighted on the well-worn tools of Cartwright’s calling. “Isn’t it about time you bought yourself a new set of surgical instruments,
Doctor
?” he inquired with the arrogance of his calling and ignorance of his youth.

“You shut your mouth. These were good enough for my father, they’re good enough for me.”

“I would have thought a rusty fork was good enough for you, sir.” Nash took a wooden case from his bag, which he opened and placed on the table for the boy to see. There, in perfectly fitting compartments lined with red plush velvet, were well-crafted surgical instruments of shining, burnished steel. As the boy made to finger one Nash barked, “You may look, but don’t you dare touch. These are the best set of amputation instruments that money can buy, purchased by my father from Tiemann Surgical Instruments of New York City.”

“Now all he has to do is learn how to use them.” Cartwright swept his bag off the table and with it went Nash’s set of Tiemann instruments.