I am happy to say that there is no immediate
chance of my being anywhere but here. We
came up for medicines and general information;
the result is that Mr. Olmsted finds such a
state of disorganization and sixes-and-sevenness
in the medical arrangements that he has deter-
mined to make his headquarters here for the
present. Mr. Knapp has therefore just started



THE OTHER SIDE OF WAR. 65

in the tug for Yorktown to bring up the sup-
ply-boats, and leave orders for our hospital-
fleet to follow us up the river as they arrive
from the North,

The state of affairs is somewhat this: when
the march from Yorktown began, and the men
dropped by thousands, exhausted, sick, and
wounded, the Medical Department, unprepared
and terribly harassed, flung itself upon the San-
itary Commission. When it became known
that our transports were lying in the river, the
brigade-surgeons made a business of sending
their sick on board of them ; and the Medical
Director sanctioned the practice. The hospitals
at Yorktown, Fortress Monroe, and Newport
News are full; the Commission has therefore
been forced to take these men to the North.
Nothing, of course, is more desirable for those
who are seriously ill or badly wounded; but
every man who falls exhausted from the ranks
is sent to us. This will prove in the end ac-
tually demoralizing to the army if not checked.
The men will come to think that illness, real or
shammed, is the way to get home. Already
suspicious rheumatic cases have appeared. Mr.
1
56 THE OTHER SIDE OF WAR.
