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Title: The Tale of a Field Hospital Author: Frederick Treves Release Date: November 21, 2012 [EBook #41432] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TALE OF A FIELD HOSPITAL
[Illustration: Portrait of Frederick Treves]
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.
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
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.
THATCHED HOUSE LODGE, RICHMOND PARK, SURREY. _November_, 1912.