PENETRATING WOUNDS OF THE ADOMEN
SE275: -- Lieutenant J. E. Mallet, Adjutant 81st New York, aged
21 years, was wounded at the battle of Cold Harbor, Va. by a musket ball,
which entered three inches to the left of the umbilicus and made its exit
a little to the right of column ( Note:
From the drawing and information define it as his spinal column .) The
officer, who still survives and holds a important civil office in the government.,
has kindly prepared an account of his case, which is peculiarly valuable
because of the rarity with which formation of the immediate symptoms produced
by severe wounds can be obtained. The authenticity of the facts is table,
and, independently of the officers own statement, is affirmed by the testimony
of the medical attention: “I died,” says this brave officer, “ at the battle
of Cold Harbor, while serving as adjutant of the 81st New York Infantry,
Oswego Regiment, then with the Army of the Potomac, and attached to the
first (Marston’s) brigade, first (Brooke’s), Eighteenth (Smith’s)
Army Corps. It was at about five O’clock in the morning, and in the assault
on the enemy’s lines, I was struck. I fell at the distance of about fifteen
paces from the works which our men were charging with pieces. The missile
entered my left side. I distinctly remember the sensations experienced
upon being hit. I imagined a ball had stuck me on the left hip bone, that
it took a downward course, tearing the intestines in its curse and against
the marrow of the fight thigh-bone. I fancied I saw sparks of fire, and
curtains of cobwebs wet with dew in the sun. I heard a monotonous roar
as of distant cataracts. I felt my teeth chatter, a rush of blood in my
eyes and the ends of my fingers and toes. These sensations crowded themselves
in the instants in which I struggled and actually fell forward on my face.
As I fell, I experienced another sensation as of a sudden and violent blow
on the neck, and then became completely insensible. I was awakened to consciousness
by cheering, and fearing to be it to be the advancing lines. I made a desperate
effort to regain my feet; and, doubled up as one with a broken back, with
a strapped on my right wrist, and the scabbard in the other hand, I dragged
myself about forty paces to the right and entered the skirt of a wood,
where I saw men hiding behind trees, which angered me, and I again fell
insensible. Remember being put on a stretcher by some men of a Massachusetts
regiment and carried some distance to an ambulance, some one had given
me a piece of sponge cake dipped in wine; but it was at one rejected. It
rained during the day, someone covered me up with a rubber blanket, which
a passer-by presently carried off, and I had the will but not the strength
to protest. The pain in the wound in the back was intense. I do not recollect
distinctly my arrival at the corps hospital.
The visit of Surgeon W.H.
Rice, and his exploration of my wound, and his instructions to a friend
to take my valuables and my inference that he considered my case hopeless,
and these memento’s were to send home.
On the afternoon of June
3rd, I was put in an ambulance wagon with
Lieutenant McKinney, and taken as far as Bethesda Church, where we
stopped over night. We proceeded on or journey next morning, over very
rugged ground. I remember the wounded who could walk, often put their
shoulders to the wagon to keep it from upsetting. We arrived at White
House Landing, on the York River, late on the afternoon of June 4th. I
had suffered much pain from shortness of breath, but was relieved
by draughts of water. I was put on a hospital transport, and ws laid
by the side of the deck, where the breeze could reach me; but it
seemed to takeaway my breath instead of restoring it. I was
very faint, and Captain Tyler, of my regiment, and others, have since
told me that I was regarded as a dead man.
I remember nothing further
until we reached Alexandria,Va. and finally
Washington, DC., where I asked to be taken to Douglas Hospital;
but nearly all the wounded were carried off in ambulance wagons, and I
though I was deserted; but finally they brought a stretcher and carried
me to Armory Square ( Hospital ), which was nearer the steamboat wharf
I was placed in Ward I about midnight. On the morning of June 6th, Medical
Inspector Coolidge examined me. From memoranda, made soon afterward, I
find that I was frequently unconscious during the next week; But that on
June 12th, I could read the leaded heading of newspapers. On June 15th,
I had a distressing pain in my bowels. Gradually my vision improved, and
on June 22nd, I began to keep my diary. Acting Assistant Surgeon Bowen
was attending me. On June 27th, I ate some blackberries, which made me
sick and for the next two days I was feverish and drowsy. On July 1st,
I had severe colic. On July 23rd, Surgeon Bliss examined me. On the 5th
, I was better , and asked to be sent home. On July 6th, I sat up in an
arm chair. On the 12th, some blackberry seeds were found in the lint removed
from the wound in the side. On July17th, I drank a glass of soda water,
which in about fifteen minutes, began to bubble out of the orifice in the
side, forcing off the adhesive plaster and compresses and soiling my clothing
with a copious fluid discharge of a yellowish order. On July 27th, I was
taken on a stretcher to the cars and rode to New York, and thence on to
Albany, and thence by rail to Oswego, where I arrived on the 29th, and
was attended by Dr. C.P.P. Clark office. My hospital diet nearly starved
me and I suffered greatly during dressing of the wound.
Note: There is one more paragraph
on Major Mallett, but hard to read and translate in this outline.
As nearly as I can determine it list the doctors in attendance over the
period of time, plus the creditability of the report.
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