198 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



invited on their own soil. Circumstances have relegated it to the 

 background, but at one time it was deemed worthy the best efforts 

 of descriptive writers. Charles Carleton Coffin, the war corre- 

 spondent and historian, wrote of one of the scenes there in lan- 

 guage that will seem to many overcolored. Speaking of an ac- 

 tion almost contemporaneous with that at the north cornfield of 

 which I have written, he says : " The Confederates had gone down 

 as grass before the scythe. . . . Resolution and energy still lin- 

 gered on the pallid cheeks, in the set teeth, in the griping hand. 

 I recall a soldier with the cartridge between his thumb and finger, 

 the end of the cartridge bitten off, and the paper between his 

 teeth, when the bullet pierced his heart and the machinery of life 

 — all the muscles and nerves — came to a standstill. A young lieu- 

 tenant had fallen in trying to rally his men ; his hand was still 

 firmly grasping his sword, and determination was visible in every 

 line of his f ace.'' 



Curiously enough, Surgeon Brinton's field records, which form 

 the basis of a paper referred to in Dr. Mitchell's remarks on the 

 subject, include three Antietam scenes. The doctor confesses in 

 the opening paragraph of his article (American Journal of the 

 Medical Sciences, vol. xix, p. 87) that this line of investigation was 

 a comparatively new one at the close of the war, 1865. He says : 

 " I have been greatly surprised at the extraordinary attitudes pre- 

 sented by the bodies of those who had fallen with wounds appar- 

 ently instantaneously fatal — as in the head or heart. In many 

 instances the body was rigid throughout, and the position unques- 

 tionably that of the last moment of life. The muscles had, as it 

 were, been surprised by death, and the limbs remained set and 

 fixed in the position held at the moment of the reception of the 

 fatal wound." 



In the cornfield, along the sunken road at Antietam (the 

 scene of Mr. Coffin's description), Dr. Brinton saw a Confederate 

 corpse semi-erect, one foot on the ground, one knee against a bank 

 of earth, and one arm stretched forward on a low breastwork. His 

 musket, with rammer in, lay on the ground, and the appearances 

 indicated that he had been killed while rising to load and fire. He 

 was shot through the center of the forehead. In the field adjoin- 

 ing the doctor counted nearly forty dead Confederates, some with 

 their arms rigidly in the air, some with legs drawn and fixed, and 

 many with trunks drawn and fixed. The positions were "not 

 those of the relaxation of death," but were due to " final muscular 

 action at the last moment of life, in the spasm of which the mus- 

 cles set and remained rigid." The wounds were chiefly in the 

 chest, though some were in the head and abdomen. His observa- 

 tions were made thirty-six hours after death. 



Another Antietam case included in Dr. Brinton's list, but re- 



