truly horrifying.

In the vast drying-room, the wide door of which was standing open, not
only was every bed occupied, but there was no more room upon the litter
that had been shaken down on the floor at the end of the apartment.
They were commencing to strew straw in the spaces between the beds,
the wounded were crowded together so closely that they were in contact.
Already there were more than two hundred patients there, and more
were arriving constantly; through the lofty windows the pitiless white
daylight streamed in upon that aggregation of suffering humanity. Now
and then an unguarded movement elicited an involuntary cry of anguish.
The death-rattle rose on the warm, damp air. Down the room a low,
mournful wail, almost a lullaby, went on and ceased not. And all about
was silence, intense, profound, the stolid resignation of despair, the
solemn stillness of the death-chamber, broken only by the tread and
whispers of the attendants. Rents in tattered, shell-torn uniforms
disclosed gaping wounds, some of which had received a hasty dressing on
the battlefield, while others were still raw and bleeding. There were
feet, still incased in their coarse shoes, crushed into a mass like
jelly; from knees and elbows, that were as if they had been smashed by
a hammer, depended inert limbs. There were broken hands, and fingers
almost severed, ready to drop, retained only by a strip of skin. Most
numerous among the casualties were the fractures; the poor arms and
legs, red and swollen, throbbed intolerably and were heavy as lead. But
the most dangerous hurts were those in the abdomen, chest, and head.
There were yawning fissures that laid open the entire flank, the knotted
viscera were drawn into great hard lumps beneath the tight-drawn skin,
while as the effect of certain wounds the patient frothed at the mouth
and writhed like an epileptic. Here and there were cases where the lungs
had been penetrated, the puncture now so minute as to permit no escape
of blood, again a wide, deep orifice through which the red tide of life
escaped in torrents; and the internal hemorrhages, those that were hid
from sight, were the most terrible in their effects, prostrating their
victim like a flash, making him black in the face and delirious.
And finally the head, more than any other portion of the frame, gave
evidence of hard treatment; a broken jaw, the mouth a pulp of teeth and
bleeding tongue, an eye torn from its socket and exposed upon t