76 BORDER LINES OF KNOWLEDGE 



again to bum his patients with hot oil for gun-shot 

 wounds.* 



This was the beginning, as nearly as we can fix it, 

 of that reform which has introduced plain water-dress- 

 ings in the place of the farrago of external applications 

 wliich had been a source of profit to apothecaries and 

 disgrace to art from, and before, the time when PHny 

 complained of them. A young surgeon who was at 

 Sudley Church, laboring among the wounded of Bull- 

 Run, tells me they had nothing but water for dressing, 

 and he (being also doux de seV) was astonished to see 

 how well the wounds did under that simple treat- 

 ment. 



Let me here mention a fact or two which may be of 

 use to some of you who mean to enter the pubHc ser- 

 vice. You will, as it seems, have gun-shot wounds 

 almost exclusively to deal with. Three different sur- 

 geons, the one just mentioned and two who saw the 

 wounded of Big Bethel, assured me that they found 

 no sabre-cuts or bayonet-wounds. It is the rifle-bullet 

 from a safe distance which pierces the breasts of our 

 soldiers, and not the gallant charge of broad platoons 

 and sweeping squadrons, such as we have been in the 

 habit of considering the chosen mode of warfare of 

 ancient and modern chivalry.f 



* Le Voyage de Thurin, (Euvres, (Paris, 1579,) p. 1198. 



t Sir Charles James Napier had the same experience in Virginia in 

 1813. " Potomac. We have nasty sort of fighting here, amongst creeks 

 and bushes, and lose men without show." " Yankee never shows himself, 

 he keeps in the thickest wood, fires and runs off." " These five thousand 



