Contrast.
This humane and considerate usage was
not adopted in the
United States hospital on
Johnson's Island, where Confederate sick and wounded officers were treated.
Colonel J. H. Holman thus testifies: “The Federal authorities did not furnish to the sick prisoners the nutriment and other articles which were prescribed by their own surgeons.
All they would do was to permit the prisoners to buy the nutriment or stimulants needed; and if they had no money,
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they could not get them.
I know this, for I was in the hospital sick myself, and I had to buy myself such articles as eggs, milk, flour, chickens and butter, after their doctors had prescribed them.
And I know this was generally the case, for we had to get up a fund among ourselves for this purpose, to aid those who were not well supplied with money.”
This statement is confirmed by the testimony of
Acting Assistant Surgeon John J. Miller, who was at
Johnson's Island for more than eight months. When it is remembered that such articles as eggs, milk and butter were very scarce and high priced in
Richmond, and plentiful and cheap at the
North, the contrast thus presented may well put to shame the “Sanitary Commission,” and dissipate the self-complacency with which they have boasted of the superior humanity in the
Northern prisons and hospitals.
