Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[399] in a horrible condition as to cleanliness, he saw no reason why the disease would not spread with irresistible fury, as so many unacclimated persons were confined there. I asked him if he had any authorities upon the peculiarities of the disease. He said that the best book he knew of was the description of the rise, progress, and decline of the disease in 1853, by Professor Everett, who had written upon the matter very intelligently. I asked him if he would loan me the treatise and he assented. I asked him if he would attach himself to my headquarters as a physician. He said to me that it would be his ruin to do such a thing.

My medical director had been chosen for me and sent down to serve under me. He was a gentleman of very high family and respectable acquirements, but had had no long service in the army or elsewhere. I talked with him about this disease and discovered that he was utterly at sea.

Meantime, as soon as I would listen to them, at orderly hours every day there were applications by officers for leave of absence to go home, under every excuse and every sort of pretence. Some men whom I knew to be good men would come to me with excuses and reasons that they should be furloughed. Only one of my staff officer, went home, and he did not come back. Fortunately nobody could go home without my written pass.

My own patience broke down under the continual perplexity of these applications, for I was continually tried with certificates of ill health from every kind of a physician. I may relate a single incident: An officer whom I knew to be a brave and respectable man,--one who would have gone to the cannon's mouth, I have no doubt, upon a simple order,--got terribly frightened about yellow fever. He came to me with two or three certificates, by which he hoped I would be induced to give him a leave of absence. At last he brought one from the surgeon of his regiment, who I knew would probably sign anything that his major desired. It was very carefully worded, declaring that the officer's state of health was such that there was great danger that his life would not be spared longer than thirty days. That was a safe certificate to give, because all of us were then in danger that our lives would not be spared more than thirty days, if as long. I looked my applicant straight in the eye and said: “I differ in opinion with your doctor, and I am going to ”