Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/50

 JACKSON

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JACKSON

shire troops were indeed on the fiohi, or wherever the wounded had been transported, but they were all young and inexperienced, and had never jierformed a single operation, to say nothing of the capital operations now demanded, and even with the best of skill they were most amazingly un- provided with even such necessary tritles as surgical needles or sutures.

Jackson began his work at once, though twilight had set in, worked nearh^ all night long with the aid of lanterns, and during the next day and the one following performed forty- eight operations, extracted a large number of bullets, and did one ampu- tation at the hip-joint on a soldier by the name of Hutchinson. When a week and a day later this poor fellow died, Hall Jackson said that the only thing that killed him was his name, so deeply indignant were the patriots then with the name of Hutchinson, as borne by a detested governor.

When this imperative work was done, it next became a vital question of a permanent hospital for the sick and convalescents of the twenty-five thou- sand troops soon collected around Bos- ton. In this great work Jackson did yeoman service. In addition to these labors, he was about the only surgeon about competent for medical con- sultations and many a day in such work with Dr. Benjamin Church he spent in riding out to Waltham, Water- town, and Medford, to visit several of the officers of high rank who had been wounded at the battle or had fallen ill later on from their heroic exposure in the service of their country. For four months Jackson remained in the camp on Winter Hill, with the exception of a few days when he suffer- ed intensely from so severe an inflam- mation of the eyes that he was obliged to give himself complete rest, and gradually became weary of working without pay of any sort, not even of rations for himself or his horse. There he was, paying out of his own purse

twelve dollars a week for his board and lodgings and seven dollars a week for the care of his horse. Nor would human nature let him forget that while so occupied in a wasting business, he had left three rival physicians at home, of whom he says in one of his very few letters extant, "Cutter, Brackett and Little are eating up my patients daily." The most galling thing, however, to him was the selfish behav- ior of many of the so-called patriots in Boston. " I am utterly disgusted with some of those damnable patriots and their glorious cause of liberty, which they are constantly flaunting in our faces. If liberty consists in killing the wounded, starving the sick and letting thern languish in the hos- pitals on bad salt pork for their only meat, I do not want to be much far- ther employed in such a glorious cause."

Despite his discouraged state of mind, neither Gen. Lee nor Gen. Sul- livan would hear of his abandoning the sick to inferior physicians and it was not until October that he was able to return home for needed rest and then to make up for time lost to his patients and practice.

Ultimately, the New Hampshire Assembly honored Dr. Jackson with the thanks of the province, paid him fifteen pounds a month and proper rations for himself and his horse and elected him surgeon to the New Hamp- shire troops in the Revolutionary Army. In return for these favors he enlisted a body of men and drilled them into a company of heavy artillery with four guns from a fort in Portsmouth harbor. In the next year he was sur- geon-in-chief in Col. Pearse Long's regi- ment and after that probably retired from active service and paid attention to his private practice.

The rest of Dr. Jackson's life was spent in active medical work. He was a first rate surgeon, and regarded as clever as an obstetrician; he paid a good deal of attention to couching