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قراءة كتاب The Tale of a Field Hospital
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THE TALE OF A FIELD HOSPITAL
THE TALE OF A
FIELD HOSPITAL
BY
SIR FREDERICK TREVES, BART.
G.C.V.O., C.B., LL.D.
Late Consulting Surgeon with H.M. Troops in South Africa,
Serjeant-Surgeon to H.M. the King, Author of "The
Other Side of the Lantern," etc.
NEW EDITION
WITH PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1912
First Published October 1900
Reprinted November and December 1900
February and August 1901
New Edition, November 1911
Preface to New Edition
The South African War, of which this Tale is told, is already near to be forgotten, although there are many to whom it still remains the most tragic memory of their lives.
War is ever the same: an arena, aglare with pomp and pageant, for the display of that most elemental and most savage of human passions, the lust to kill, as well as a dumb torture place where are put to the test man's fortitude and his capacity for the endurance of pain.
This brief narrative is concerned not with shouting hosts in defiant array, but with the moaning and distorted forms of men who have been "scorched by the flames of war." It deals with the grey hours after the great, world-echoing display is over, with the night that ends the gladiator's show, when the arena is occupied only by the maimed, the dying and the dead.
It is admitted that in the South African War the medical needs of the Army were efficiently and promptly supplied. This account serves to show of what kind is the work of the Red Cross in the field. It may serve further to bring home to the reader the appalling condition of the wounded in war when--as in the present campaign in the Near East--the provision for the care of the sick is utterly inadequate, if not actually lacking.
FREDERICK TREVES.
THATCHED HOUSE LODGE,
RICHMOND PARK, SURREY.
November, 1912.
Preface to the First Edition
In this little book some account is given of a field hospital which followed for three months the Ladysmith Relief Column, from the time, in fact, that that column left Frere until it entered the long-beleaguered town. The fragmentary record is based upon notes written day by day on the spot. Some of the incidents related have been already recounted in a series of letters published in the British Medical Journal, and certain fragments of those letters are reproduced in these pages, or have been amplified under circumstances of greater leisure.
The account, such as it is, is true.
It may be that the story is a little sombre, and possibly on occasions gruesome; but war, as viewed from the standpoint of a field hospital, presents little that is cheery.
It appears that some interest might attach to an account of the manner in which our wounded faced their troubles, and of the way in which they fared, and under the influence of that impression this imperfect sketch has been written.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER