A report to the Surgeon General on the transport of sick and wounded by pack animals / by George A. Otis.
- George Alexander Otis
- Date:
- 1877
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A report to the Surgeon General on the transport of sick and wounded by pack animals / by George A. Otis. Source: Wellcome Collection.
16/48 page 6
![FIG. 3.—United States Army regulation two-horse-Htter. f From a sample in the Army Medical Museum.] in the Army Medical Museum is eighty-eight pounds.1 I cannot learn that these litters were used during the late war; but in hostilities with Indians that have occurred since its termination, as in the Modoc campaign of 1873, they were sometimes carried into the field, and, in the last two years, improvised litters, constructed on the same general plan, have been extensively employed; and it is surprising that they have been regarded in some quarters as a novel device.2 In the Eevised Regulations for the Army of the United States for 1861, Paragraph 1298 reads: Horse-litters may be prepared and furnished to posts whence they may be required for service on ground not admitting the employment of two-wheeled carriages; said litters to be composed of a canvas bed similar to the present stretcher, and of two poles each sixteen feet long, to be made in sections, with head and foot pieces constructed to act as stretchers to keep the poles apart. Reports printed further on fully explain the mode of constructing extemporaneously and of using this form of two-horse litter;3 but before introducing them it is proper, in chrono- logical order, to allude to some other forms of sick-trausport on pack-animals. During the progress of the late war in this country, a number of persons, actuated by motives of patriotism, humanity, or interest, devised and brought to the notice of the War Department forms of conveyance for the sick and wounded, in localities impracticable for wheeled vehicles, that were represented as improvements upon existing patterns. Several of these were apparently suggested by the descriptions of Delafield4 and McClellan6 of the horse litters and cacolets they had observed in the Crimea. In October, 1801, W. C. H. Waddell forwarded to Secretary Cameron a proposal to construct cacolets and litters for army use, accompanied by drawings (Figs. 7, 8), copied from Delafield's report, and suggested some trivial modifications. In November, 1861, Mr. G. Kohler offered to furnish mule-litters and chairs of patterns imitated from those used in the Crimea. In July, 1862, three hundred of these litters were purchased. Iu April, 1862, Surgeon 1 The litter deposited in the Army Medical Museum is numbered 2457, of Section I. (See Catalogue of Surgical Section, 1866, p. 625.) It weighs 88 pounds. The poles are of ash, cylindrical, and 2g inches in diameter and 16 feet long, divided into sections, united by strong wrought-iron strap- hinges. The leading sections are 4J feet; the middle, 8 feet ; and the rear, feet in length. The side poles are kept apart by traverses of the same calibre, 25 inches in length, with J-inch iron collars, inch wide. Each traverse is supplied with 5 iron pins to which the sacking-bottom is corded, and is surmounted by a head- or foot-board of half-inch stuff, 8 inches high, and protected by an iron rim. The collars of the traverses rest against,iron shoulders, 12 inches from either end of the middle sections. The strong canvas sacking-bottom is 6 feet by 2 feet 9 inches. The side poles are inserted through a wide hem. The end sections are furnished with heavy straps and girths. 2 A palanquin, or two-horse litter, as used in the sixteenth century, is figured in a wood-cut in Charles Knight's Old England, compiled from several pictures in BKAUN's Civitates Orbis Terrarum, 1584. In FIG. 4 the por- tion of the cut representing the horse-litter is copied. In Shifts and Expedients of Camp Life, by LORD and Baines (London,1871, p. 687), there is a sugges- tion of an arrangement that might, under favorable circumstances, be made available for the carriage of a wounded man, with a cut (FIG. 5) of the appliance for suspending the patient either in a semi-recumbent or prone posi- tion. A conveyance much resembling tins is used, according to Professor LONGMORE, in some parts of the East Indies,where it is called a Tukta-rewan. 3 Professor T. LOXGMORE, in his excellent Treatise on the Transport of Sick and Wounded Troops, London, 1869, p. 292, thus refers to this form of litter: It is necessary to notice another form of sick-transpcrt litter issued for use in the early part of the late war in the United States, in which, instead of two litters being suspended across one horse or mule, one litter was suspended between two horses. This is a very ancient form of litter in Europe. Frequent notices of it occur, showing its common use on occasions of state and ceremony, as well as its employment for the carriage of sick persons, in the records of our own country prior to the introduction of coaches. It seems curious that its use should have been revived in modern times in America. In a note it is added : This form of litter is referred to as late as the reign of CHARLES the 2d. A quotation introduced into the first volume of Knight's London, pp. 24 and 25, mentions that Major-General Skipton, coming in a horse-litter to London when wounded, as he passed by the brew- house near St. John street, a fierce mastiff flew at one of the horses and held him so fast that the horse grew mad as a mad dog; the soldiers were so amazed that none had the wit to shoot the mastiff; but the horse-litter, borne between the two horses, tossed the Major-General like a dog in a blanket. 4 Report of the Secretary of War, communicating the Report of Captain GEORGE B. McCLELLAX (First Regiment United States Cavalry), one of the Officers sent to the Seat of War in Europe in 1855 and 1856. Washington, 1857. 6 Report on the Art of War in Europe in 1854, 1855, and 1856, by Major RICHARD DELAFIELD, Corps of Engineers, from his Notes and Observa- tions made as a Member of a Military Commission to the Theater of War in Europe under the orders of the Hon. Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War Washington, 1860. FIG. 5.—LORD and BAIXES'S horse-litter. FIG. 4.—Two-horse litter of the XVI century.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21779156_0016.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
