epted.
All around were dead and wounded men, many of the latter dying.
The surgeons, with gleaming, sometimes bloody, knives and instruments,
were busy at their work. I soon was laid on the rough board
operating table and chloroformed, and skilful surgeons--Charles E.
Cady (138th Pennsylvania) and Theodore A. Helwig (87th Pennsylvania)
--cut to the injured parts, exposed the fractured ends of the
shattered bones, dressed them off with saw and knife, and put them
again in place, splinted and bandaged. I was then borne to a pallet
on the ground to make room for--"_Next_." The sensation produced
by the anaesthetic, in passing to and from unconsciousness, was
exhilarating and delightful. For some hours, exhausted from loss
of blood as I was, I fell into short dozes, accompanied with fanciful
dreams. Not all have the same experience.

From this hospital, on the 7th, I was taken by ambulance, in the
immense train of wounded, towards Spotsylvania Court House, but on
nearing that place, the train diverging from the track of the army,
moved, with the roar of the battle in our ears, slowly to
Fredericksburg. At its frequent halts, great kettles of beef tea
were made and brought to us. I drank gallons of it, as did others.
It was grateful to a thirsty, fevered palate, but afforded little
nourishment. For about ten days I was confined to a bed in a
private house--Mrs. Alsop's--taken for an officers' hospital. The
wounded from Spotsylvania also soon arrived at Fredericksburg, and
surgeons and nurses were overtaxed. Contract surgeons appeared
from the North; also nurses and attendants from each of the Sanitary
and Christian Commissions. I was visited by Miss Dorothea L. Dix
(then seventy years of age), who was in charge of a corps of hospital
nurses. Horace Mann had, long before, apotheosized her for her
philanthropic work for the insane.(11) A highly inflamed condition
of my arm threatened my life while here, but finally reaching Acquia
Creek, I went by hospital boat to Washington, thence home.
Everywhere, hotels, hospitals, boats, and cars were crowded with
the wounded, fresh from the Wilderness and Spotsylvania. Philanthropic
people of principal cities kept, day and night, surgeons with
skilled assistants at depots to care for the travelling wounded.

But to return to the Wilderness. The Sixth Corps, with little
fighting, recovered its lost position on the morning of the 7th.
The Fifth had a fierce engagement on