26th.—To-day, was so far recovered that I reported myself for duty at the Liberty Hall Hospital.[1] I found there about four hundred sick, about one hundred of whom were crowded into the house. The rest were lying about in stables, alive with vermin—chicken houses, the stench of which would sicken a well man, on the ground, exposed alternately to beating rain and the rays of the scorching sun. There were no beds, no blankets, no straw, no cooking utensils and nothing to cook. The sick were lying on the bare floor, or on the bare ground, without covering, and this was the third day they had been in this situation without food, or without any one to look after them, except as they could mutually aid each other. All kinds of diseases prevail, from simple intermittent to the lowest camp typhus, complicated with scurvey; from simple diarrhœa to the severest of dysentery. My first effort has been to separate the simple from the infectious diseases. To pitch what few tents I have, and to get as many as I can under shelter, I have before me, in the organization of this hospital, a Herculean task for a man not quite recovered from a spell of sickness. But what I can, I will do.
[1] Liberty Hall is a large dwelling, the birth place and home, during his life, of Patrick Henry. It is about eight miles from Richmond.
