With sabre and scalpel : the autobiography of a soldier and surgeon

Front matter

UNIVERSITY OF

NORTH CAROLINA

AT CHAPEL HILL

Part I

CHAP. PAGE

Introduction xiii

I. The Tennessee Valley — Marshall County and Gunters-

ville in Alabama i

II. Early Recollections 5

III. Our Village Boys 10

IV. Horse and Gun 14

V. Major, the Village King — Lesson from the Life of a Noble

Dog 23

VI. Early Scenes, Religious and Otherwise 30

VII. The Aristocracy of the Old South 37

VIII. The Negro and Slavery in the Old South 52

IX. The Point of View — History of American Slavery and

the Abolition Crusaders — Some Truths about John Brown and the So-called Martyrdom 74

X. Some Facts about John Brown Not Generally Known 94 XL A Dissertation upon the Perversion of Facts — Sketches

from the Backwoods of Alabama — The Grape-vine Telegraph — The Liars' Tournament — The Sheriff's Story of "When the Yankees First Came" .... 128

XII. The Snakes of Northern Alabama 147

XIII. My Year at College — The Gunboat Incident 160

XIV. With Morgan's Cavalry— The Christmas Raid — 1 862-1 863 177

XV. Fourth Alabama Cavalry 197

XVI. Covering the Retreat from Tullahoma — The 27TH of vii

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

XVII. TULLAHOMA TO ALEXANDRIA — ELK RlVER 223

XVIII. Chickamauga, Where the Independence of the Southern

Confederacy was Won and Lost — The Real Crisis of the Civil War 237

XIX. Sequatchie Valley — Capture of the Great Wagon-train

— A Prisoner of War 265

XX. Prison Life in Camp Morton — Homeward Bound — John

Jones 286

XXI. After the War 313

XXII. A Medical Student in 1867 — Three Years in Arkansas

— Steamboating and Contracting 327

XXIII. At Bellevue Medical College — Work in the Dis-

secting - room — Assistant Demonstrator and Prosector to the Chair of Anatomy — Beginning of the Prize Essays in Surgical Anatomy and Surgery — The Study of Greek, German, and French — 1 872-1 878 . . 347

XXIV. London — Paris — Berlin — Vienna — Dr. J. Marion Sims —

Mt. Sinai Hospital — Text-book on Surgery — President New York Pathological Society — Bloodless Amputation of the Shoulder and Hip Joints — Vice- President American Medical Association — Life of Forrest 366

XXV. The Tennessee & Coosa — How I Financed a Railroad

and Saved a Fortune for a Friend — Revisit My Alma Mater — Write the Life of Forrest 381

XXVI. The American Medical Association — The Medical So-

ciety of the State of New York — The New York State Medical Association 395

XXVII. Italy and the Great St. Bernard — The Bonaparte

Trail — Marengo 399

XXVIII. Mind-reading or Thought-transference — The Value

of Suggestion — Christian Science — The Miracle sat Lourdes — A Mormon Episode and Other Experiences 414

XXIX. Right handedness or Dextral Preference in Man —

Also Some Suggestions as to the Value of Enforced

Ambidexterity . . , 432

viii

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

XXX. Occupations of a Retired Life — Building the New Polyclinic Hospital — President of the New York Academy of Medicine and of the New York Southern Society — Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Union League Club, Etc 444

Part II

I. Founding the Polyclinic 461

II. Ligation of the External Carotid Artery 467

III. Bloodless Amputation at the Hip - joint and at the

Shoulder 472

IV. The Treatment of Vascular Tumors (Angiomata) by the

Injection into Their Substance of Water at a High Temperature 480

V. Demonstration by Experimental Studies on Animals and

by Operations on Human Beings of the Process of Permanent Arterial Occlusion after Deligation . . 486

VI. Contribution to the Study of the Effect of Streptococ-

cus and Pyogenic Infection upon Sarcoma 489

VII. The Surgical Anatomy and Surgery of the Tibio-Tarsal

Articulation, with Special Reference to a Modification of Syme's Amputation 495

VIII. Transplanting Skin from the Abdomen or Other Parts

of the Body to the Hand or Forearm — Transferring the Graft by This Means to the Face, Neck, or Elsewhere 498

IX. Contributions to the Surgery of the Mouth, Naso-

pharynx, and Antrum Maxillaris 502

X. Contributions to the Surgery of the Bones — Transplan-

tation of the Proximal End of the Ulna to the Distal

of the Radius in an Ununited Colles' Fracture . . . 509

XI. Hip-joint Disease Treated by Combination of Hutchinson's

High Shoe and Crutches and Sayre's Long Extension Splint 514

XII. Verses 520

Genealogy 528

ILLUSTRATIONS

John Allan Wyeth, M.D., LL.D Frontispiece

Marshall County Court-house, Guntersville, Alabama . Facing p. 2

Cherokee Missionary Station, 1820 " 8

"Major" and His Pupil " 24

A Huntsville Mansion of the Early Days " 48

La Grange Military Academy, 1861 " 160

Site of La Grange Military Academy " 164

The "Old Brick Church" " 166

John A. Wyeth, Co. I, 4TH Alabama Cavalry " 212

Lieut. John A. Gibson, Co. C, 4TH Alabama Cavalry. . . " 214

Map of the Battle of Chickamauga " 239

Battle-flag of the Southern Confederacy ..... " 262

Statue of Dr. J. Marion Sims, Bryant Park, New York . ' ' 370

A Chamois on Guard " 402

Polyclinic Medical School and Hospital, 341-351 West

Fiftieth Street, New York " 462

Bust Portrait of Dr. John A. Wyeth, Unveiled at the

Polyclinic Hospital, May i, 1914 " 464

My Sweetheart's Face " 520

The chief purpose of this volume is to record from personal observation something of the social, economic, and political conditions which prevailed in the South before, during, and immediately after the Civil War. It was my good fortune to have been born and reared in a section where the wealthy landed proprietors and slave-owners, the poorer whites, and the negroes came together.

What is written of the delightful society of the aristocracy of the old South at Huntsville would apply to hundreds of other communities of that period below "the Line." It was only possible with the institution of slavery, and with the downfall of the Southern oligarchy it disappeared, never to be repeated. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, Wythe, Monroe, Mason, the Randolphs and Lees were among the products of that unique civilization. "There were giants in those days."

In my native county the poor whites greatly outnumbered the rich slaveholders and their slaves. The negroes baptized them contemptuously as "poor white trash." They were poor, comparatively speaking, but they were not trash. The vast majority were uneducated, many could not read or write; but they were as a class far from being ignorant, for they were "good listeners" and close observers of current events. My father, whom they made at first county and later district judge, was idolized by these simple people,

xiii and I fell heir to their affectionate guardianship. By the time I was fifteen years old I believe I was personally acquainted with every one of these families in our county. Their homes were chiefly in the uplands or foot-hills or coves or in the sparsely settled plateau of Sand Mountain. The houses were of logs, some hewn, many of skinned poles, and some so primitive that the bark was left on. The roofs were of rived boards, not nailed, but held in place by split logs laid on as weights and reinforced here and thdre by stones. Some of the floors were of puncheons, others of planks; and not infrequently the kitchen, smokehouse, and other added shelters had for flooring the sandy earth. As might be inferred, their lives were simple, and in general they were obedient to law. They were, however, high-strung and quick to resent an affront, and their too ready appeal to the rifle and the hunting-knife in the settlement of personal differences was the chief exception to their common acceptance of the authority which the court-house represented. Very rarely, far back in some remote fastness, an occasional mountaineer, who gathered inspiration from the sun which curved over his head each day without seeming to pay much attention to human regulations, or from the free air which the preacher told him "bloweth where it listeth," would conclude that the government at Washington had no right to prescribe in what form the corn which he raised with his own hands and on his own land should ultimately be marketed, and would proceed to distil it into whisky by the light of the moon. I shall never forget the feeling which was evident as one of these mountaineers remarked to me: "Your pap put me in jail once for moonshinin', but I never blamed him fer it. We all knowed he was a good man and done what he thought was

xiv right." These poor whites were in the main religious, belonging to the Baptist or Methodist persuasions, and were much given to "protracted meetings," revivals, and exhortations to secure conversions, which latter was defined as "comin' through."

They dressed with extreme simplicity, usually in cotton or woolen stuffs, raised, spun, woven, and tailored at home. The mild climate made it possible to go for at least nine months without shoes, and the one pair of brogans for the year was usually put on at Christmas. The young children and boys to about the sixteenth year wore in summer-time nothing but a single garment made like a long shirt, which came down to near the ankles and was slit on each side as high as the knees to allow freedom in walking or running. As they raised everything they ate, except sugar and coffee, it may well be said that their wants were few and easily supplied.

At least three-fourths of the men who carried guns in the battle-line of the Southern Confederacy were of this class. They had no interest directly or indirectly in slavery, and would willingly have seen the negroes freed and colonized out of the country. The proportion of non-slave-owners in my own company and regiment was greater than seventy-five per cent. Colonel James Cooper Nesbit,1 in his most interesting and instructive narrative, says : ' ' My company, H, Twenty-first Georgia regiment, was recruited in northwest Georgia and Alabama. The muster-rolls show one hundred and eighty-five names. All were non-slaveholders except myself. The parents of four owned one or two slaves, and the father of one of my lieutenants owned forty.

1 Four Years on the Firing Line, p. 69. Imperial Press, Chattanooga, Term., 1914.

XV

This was the average of the Twenty-first Georgia and the Twenty-first North Carolina of the same brigade, and these two regiments made the best record of any in Stonewall Jackson's corps."

The brave fight these men made was not for slavery. Their contention was that freemen had the inherent right to do as they pleased, and as freemen they would stay in the JJnion or secede, as the majority desired. They were then and are still clean-cut Americans, uncontaminated by contact or association with the restless, poverty-stricken, and discontented hordes of immigrants who are crowding our shores in these latter days either as anarchists, who, like shedding snakes, strike blindly and viciously at everything which moves, or like the socialists, whose aim is seemingly to bring all human endeavor to the common level of mediocrity. Should the safety of our institutions ever be endangered I prophesy that these men of the foot-hills and mountains of the South will be the strongest guarantee of law and order.

At various periods in history (and doubtless before the records were preserved, for in his natural tendency to do foolish things on a large scale man is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever) epidemics of insanity have appeared with results more unfortunate to moral and intellectual development than have followed the wide-spread infections of the body.

The legend of the Tower of Babel; the numerous racial migrations ; the crusades and the war of the five great nations now in progress in Europe, each of which, claiming to represent a Christian civilization, is calling for divine assistance in robbing and killing, are examples.

One such epidemic has visited our shores. In the agita-

xvi tion for and against slavery in the United States, reason and conscience were finally dominated by fanaticism. There was a period in the decade from 1830 when by the judicious co-operation of the advocates of emancipation North and South a humane and practical solution of this momentous problem was possible. I ask attention to the fact that at this time there were in the eight largely agricultural and slave-owning counties of my native section along the Tennessee River in Alabama eight active emancipation societies organized by Southern men, and that in Huntsville a former slaveholder edited an emancipation newspaper and was twice nominated for the Presidency of the United States on the abolition ticket; also to the fact that a single state freed negroes approximating in value one hundred million dollars without one penny of remuneration!

I am firmly convinced that if instead of the nagging, irritating, insulting, and finally insurrectionary and murderous meddlesomeness of the Northern abolitionists, the conservative and better portion had united in earnest and friendly co-operation with their brothers of the South, who proved their zeal and devotion to principle by the wholesale sacrifice of wealth and ease, the humane scheme of emancipation and colonization as set forth in the "Virginia Resolutions" would have been carried out and chattel slavery would have disappeared by peaceful means.

That portion of the volume which relates to the Civil War is chiefly a narrative of the every-day life of a private soldier in camp, in battle, and in prison. A single experience— namely, the battle of Chickamauga — is discussed from the standpoint of speculation. In my opinion the Southern Confederacy was won here by desperate valor and lost by the failure of the commanding general to appreciate the

xvii magnitude of his victory and to take advantage of the great opportunity which was his for the capture or destruction of the entire Union army in Georgia and Tennessee. Chickamauga, as I interpret it from personal observation and from careful study, marked the high tide of the Confederacy.

I have been asked to describe the sensations or emotions which are experienced under the trying ordeal of battle. The courage, whether moral or physical, or the combination of both, which enables a human being to incur the risk of suffering and death is a common possession. I would guess that of every one hundred men in our regiment fully ninety-five would have done, or would have tried to do, more or less willingly, any duty required. The other five would shirk and exhaust ingenuity to keep out of gunshot range by feigning illness, or some temporary necessity, or lagging until a chance offered to dodge behind an obstacle whence only the file-closers could drive them to the firingline.

In very rare instances the sense of fear became so overwhelming the victim would run away without regard to the commands to halt and the danger of being shot in the back by one's own men.

Personally I never saw any one do this, but it did occur. The very unusual experience of the soldier who, when what was thought to be a dangerous charge was ordered and we were in the act of moving forward, stepped from the ranks and handed his gun to our captain and said he couldn't "go in" is given in the text. Vanity, another name for which is "family pride," or the dread of being called a coward, will account in part for what is usually accepted as courage ; and yet admitting all this as a measure of human frailty, I have witnessed a great many instances of that

xviii sublime quality of self-forgetfulness in the performance of duty which is the crystallization of virtue — namely, true courage. Appreciating, as every normal human being must, the instinctive dread of suffering and the love of life, it is not difficult to realize the awful sensation which is experienced in the moments given for reflection as one marches calmly up to the point of danger. It must, as I take it, count as a supreme moment in existence. Once engaged and in the excitement of fighting, this sense of impending disaster is happily lost ; and to some there comes an exhilaration which it would be almost permissible to term ecstatic.

In my own case, in the first two or three minor engagements I was not scared; in fact, the excitement or exhilaration was rather enjoyable; but this was "the valor of ignorance." After I had learned what war really was I never went under fire without experiencing an overpowering sense of dread and fear, with the single exception of the incident of riding through the Union lines at Chickamauga, which is given further on.

Part II is devoted mainly to my work as a surgeon and teacher. My aim has been to collect in concise form for convenient reference those original contributions which have been generally accepted by the profession.

The Ligation of the External Carotid Artery as an accepted procedure dates from the publication of my essays on the arteries by the American Medical Association in 1878; the Bloodless Amputations at the Hip-joint and at the Shoulder, in 1889; The Cure of Otherwise Inoperable Vascular Tumors by the Injection into their Substance of Water at a High Temperature; The Immunizing Effect upon Sarcoma of a Mixed {Pyogenic) Infection; The Demonstration of the Process of Arterial Occlusion after Ligation in Continuity, etc.

xix

Upon these, together with the introduction of systematized postgraduate medical teaching in America, the author "rests his case" at the bar of posterity. That the Polyclinic gave an impetus to and was coincident with the great awakening in American medicine there can be no doubt. Once inaugurated, the movement practically compelled postgraduate study in the general profession, for it naturally followed, that when even a single practitioner in any community took advantage of the extraordinary facilities which were offered for increasing his store of knowledge, public opinion, that insistent vis a tergo of human progress, compelled the others to follow. Not only has every city of importance in our own country established one or more postgraduate medical schools, but abroad (as in London) our system has been adopted.

PART I

THE TENNESSEE VALLEY — MARSHALL COUNTY AND GUNTERS- VILLE IN ALABAMA

Fifth in size of the rivers in the United States, the Tennessee, rising in the mountainous regions of Virginia and North Carolina, flows in a general direction southwest until, at the great bend in northern Alabama, it turns northwest to empty into the Ohio. Although three-fourths of its course is within the boundaries of the state to which it gave its name, that section of the South widely known as the Tennessee Valley is wholly within the state of Alabama.

Eastward and to the north, from where Lookout stands sentinel for the mighty Appalachian range, the numerous large tributaries fairly divide honors with the main stream, while to the west, after pitching over the great cascade at Mussel Shoals, it leaves the mountains and the picturesque valley through which it has flowed for two hundred miles.

Emerging near Chattanooga from the narrow gorge through which it has worn its way, walled in by cliffs of stone so steep and high that from the channel their crests are at times not within the range of vision, this majestic river enters the beautiful Valley of the Tennessee.

Winding in and out among the mountains on either hand, some near, some far, for most of the year covered with verdure to the steep cliffs which form their crests, opening here and there into fertile plains or densely timbered coves that rise as they recede to reach the summit of the distant heights, on past bold projecting bluffs which seem to block the way, wide fields of corn and grain and cotton which long before the frosts of winter fall shall be as white as snow upon the arctic plains, flows ever on this gracious gift of nature, blessing with plenty my native Valley of the Tennessee.

In 1802 the territory now included in the states of Mississippi and Alabama was ceded by Georgia to the United States, and in 18 19 Alabama was admitted to the Union. That portion of this new state lying north of the river had been opened for settlement a number of years, while to the south stretched the reservations of three great Indian tribes — the Seminoles, nearest the Gulf of Mexico; then the restless, warring Creeks, and, closest in touch with civilization, the wonderful Cherokees. Lovers of peace and tactful, they were on living terms not only with their warlike brothers, but friendly also with their Anglo-Saxon neighbors just across the Tennessee. Builders of houses : and tillers of the soil, these Indians had made such progress toward civilization that they had in use a syllabic alphabet and a method of printing. Invented by Sequoyah,1 this alphabet of eighty -five characters, each representing a single sound of their language, is pronounced by a writer in the American Encyclopedia to be the "most perfect alphabet ever devised for any language."

While the Cherokees could not hold the Creeks and Seminoles to peaceful ways, they would not allow them to

1 This remarkable man died in 1843. It was with this tribe that Sara Houston lived before and after he became Governor of Tennessee.

pass through their domain to harrow the white settlers north of the Tennessee. The massacre at Fort Mims, Alabama, on August 30, 1 8 13, where four hundred men, women, and children were butchered, led to the annihilation of the Creek Nation at the battle of the Horseshoe Bend on the Tallapoosa in 1 8 14, while the remnant of their allies, the Seminoles, sought refuge in the impenetrable marshes of the everglades in Florida, where they still survive. For twenty-four years longer the Cherokees lingered in their native land, until by treaty in 1836 they marched to the West, and their former reservation was opened for settlers.

When from a part of this Indian land the new county of Marshall was formed, Louis Wyeth, a young lawyer, journeying by stage from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to Pittsburg, by steamboat down the Ohio to Louisville, Kentucky, thence by stage to Huntsville, Alabama, and on foot for the remainder of the way (for as yet there were only trails in the Cherokee purchase), came to cast his lot with the other pioneers and to "grow up with the country."

He must have taken well with these men of the wilderness, for they made him their county judge within the first years of his advent; and, although he did not long remain on the bench — for he sought a wider field — it may truthfully be said that throughout a long and useful career he judged these, his people, to whose welfare he devoted his life. In 1848 he founded the town of Guntersville at the south bend of the Tennessee, built at his private expense a handsome brick court-house and a well-appointed jail, which were his gift s to the county and the new town, which became and still is the county-seat. As a member of the state legislature he secured a charter for a railroad "to connect the navigable waters of the Tennessee and Coosa rivers, with the object of securing an inland system of transportation between Mobile Bay and the vast rich region through which flowed the Tennessee and its tributaries." Of this railroad, which is now a part of the great Nashville & Chattanooga and Louisville & Nashville railroad systems, he was the originator and first president.

II Early Recollections

It would be interesting to determine just when the brain-cells begin to register impressions that become fixed and are subject to the call of memory; and also with which of the senses these early registrations are associated. The brain is such an unreliable machine that the results of its operations require careful study and critical analysis before acceptance. Since older minds (which are considered mature) are known to entertain absolutely impossible schemes as fixed convictions, it is not to be wondered at that children are readily susceptible to self-deception. I have no doubt that many incidents retold as being the recollections of early childhood are nothing more than reflected images of word-pictures from older persons who really were witnesses. Only to-day a woman of more than ordinary brilliancy and of unquestionable sincerity assured me she remembered distinctly being held as a baby in her grandmother's arms when she was only a little more than one year old!

It occurs to me that since children are almost wholly animal, their earlier brain-cell registrations should be associated with alimentation, and with those to whose personal ministrations they looked for comfort and protection. It would seem but natural that one's mother should come first of all things; but with myself, I am sorry to say, this is not the case. I was four years old when my memory of things began ; and my mother, who, as I now know, did little else but devote her time and thoughtful care to me, does not hold this precedence. My earliest recollection is of a burning house, and of Mack, one of our slaves, holding me seated on one of the front gate-posts, where I could have a good view of the conflagration. The date of this incident is known, and it enables me to determine that my brain-cells were not registering fixed impressions earlier than the fourth year. About this time I first straddled a horse and tumbled off, and that incident was indelibly impressed, as was a relation thus early established with Aunt Peggy, our negro cook, whereby without the knowledge of my mother, at about ten o'clock every morning I found myself in the kitchen eating from a small wooden tray corn-bread crusts soaked in "pot-liquor," a very filling, greasy, and satisfying mixture, which, I learned later, was a common food of the negro children of the plantations.

It is clear, then, as far as I am concerned, that the very first enduring impression was conveyed to the cells from the retina, through the so-called "sense of sight." The second was from fright, and fused with this is another impression which seems to indicate that the mind was commencing operations from within on its own responsibility. I very distinctly remember that as I was sliding off the bare back of the horse and was about half-way to the ground my good guardian Mack caught me and placed me again in position. Being scared, I asked him to let me get off and walk, but he was as inexorable as the law of gravitation. There was no getting out of it. I had to learn, and did learn, and from that time on I almost lived on horseback. This lovable slave not only taught me to ride, but he gave me a first lesson of inestimable value, which was, not to get scared and quit. The third registration, which, according to the "animal theory" just expressed, should have come first, was evidently conveyed through the "sense of taste," or hunger. Now, the one — to me — incomprehensible feature of this retrospection is that up to this period, and even later, I have not the slightest recollection of my parents. I was on excellent terms with the cook, and between Mack and his ward there was established an affectionate association which had already a fixed place and never ceased; in fact, grew so strong as time went on that I never wanted to be away from him in daylight.

At five years of age I was taken to school ; and here again fright comes in, for I doubt if any wretch riding toward the guillotine ever suffered more than did this victim of civilization on this occasion. The teacher who preceded the present incumbent had not spared the rod; in fact, had whipped two of his boy pupils so severely that his services were dispensed with. Hearing all this from the older children, I supposed I would come in for my share from the new man, who was "part Cherokee." '

"Mr. Dave" was, however, a mild-mannered man, and, while he kept a long hickory switch in the chimney corner near his chair, it was only a reminder of the possibilities which might follow bad behavior. The worst he ever did was to "thump" us on the head with the last knuckle of one finger, and usually we got this punishment for misspelling a word or for some shortcoming in our studies. My first, and I believe only, experience came within a day or two after I began. The spelling-class stood in a row behind one of the long benches. When a word went wrong, in order to have the correction indelibly impressed on our

1 Descended from intermarriage between a Cherokee Indian and a white person.

minds the culprit had to walk to where the teacher sat, project his small head in advance of the perpendicular, and receive thereon a thump which was light or heavy in proportion to the gravity of the error. My offense was ' ' separation," and from that day to this I have never forgotten that it is dangerous to change the first "a" of the word into "e." I had been at school for some time, and was well turned into my seventh year, when on one memorable day I made a discovery which was worth more to me than the finding of a new world was to Columbus. I discovered my mother, and incidentally began to appreciate the fact that I had a father, although at this early period he occupied a position, to my vision, very much r nearer the horizon than did my newly discovered planet. The discovery came about in this fashion: a boy playmate lost his temper at something that happened between us, and in anger gave me a slap which I did not resent. At this juncture I heard a voice from a near-by window, and, turning, I saw my mother leaning out, her eyes flashing so that I could almost see the sparks flying and her cheeks as red as fire. In a tone about which there could be no misinterpretation, even by one who instinctively preferred peace to war, she asked me if the boy struck me in anger; and when I told her he had, she blazed up and said, "And you didn't hit him back?" My response was that father had told me it was wrong to fight, and that when another boy gave way to anger just to tell him it was wrong | and not fight back. At this the blue bonnet of Clan- Allan went "over the border," and she fairly screamed: "I don't care what your father told you; if you don't whip that boy this minute I'll whip you!" And she looked on, and was satisfied when it was all over. I date my career from that eventful day; for I had come to the parting of the ways.