I would not accept the wine or read the note, and in this course I was
upheld by Dr. McAllister, who severely reprimanded Lieutenant Cox, and
excused me from future attendance upon that ward.
I have said that Charlie Gazzan was a special patient and friend;
perhaps the expression needs explanation. A few weeks before, he had
been brought to me one night from the ambulance-train, a living
skeleton, and seemingly at the point of death from dysentery. His
family and that of my husband were residents of Mobile, Alabama, and
intimate friends. He seemed almost in the agony of death, but had
asked to be brought to me. There was not, after the battle of
Murfreesboro', a single vacant bed. He begged hard not to be put in a
crowded ward, so, until I could do better, he was placed upon the
lounge in my office. One small room in the officers' ward being
vacant, I asked and obtained next day the privilege of placing him
there. He recovered very slowly, but surely, and during his
convalescence made himself useful in a hundred ways. My sick boys owed
many a comfort to his wonderful powers of invention; even the surgeons
availed themselves of his skill.
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