The guards furnished themselves with comfortable huts, arranged with the common conveniences, and their bunks were suspended above the contact of the treacherous ground. Their invalids were well cared for also in the large hospital which was erected expressly for the garrison, and which consisted of two large two-story wooden buildings, admirably arranged, with the conveniences proper to the service. The kitchen, the dispensary, the ventilation, and the general arrangement, showed that scientific care and forethought had been observed there. The hospital system of the rebels was quite complete, and most of their hospitals throughout the country were well constructed and equipped; and some of them were models of neatness, comfort, and scientific arrangement. The garrison hospital at Andersonville offers a terrible contrast to the open space, the wretched agglomeration, which the rebel authorities called a hospital for the prisoners. It is true that the commanding officers were compelled, from some unknown pressure,--whether the sense of shame, or dictate from Richmond,--to order and commence the erection, at a late date, of a new hospital stockade. This was to consist of a high palisade, about one thousand feet in length, with twenty-two open sheds erected in the interior; but it was never finished, nor occupied, and it remains to-day as it was left by the rude, black artisans, one of the evidences of either remorse or reluctant obedience to the lingering sense of natural compassion of its senseless and heartless rulers. V. In the organization of a hospital the most important parts are the system of nursing and the supply and cooking of food; when these are observed, much exposure to the elements can be endured. Pestilences are retarded, and sometimes completely checked, in their destructive career when opposed by generous alimentation and sympathetic care; and the vital powers,--the _vis medicatrix naturæ_,--rally their mighty strength for renewed effort. We have for instance the great and marked change in the healthy condition and the mortality of the British army before Sebastopol in the spring of 1856, when England poured out lavishly her treasures, and sent men of scientific ability to correct the well-nigh fatal errors of hygiene which were committed by her military men. We have also another instance in the check of a devastating pestilence at New Orleans, as observed and mentioned by Dr. Cartwright. "As soon as a generous public diffused the comforts of life among the seventy thousand destitute emigrant population of New Orleans, last summer, the pestilence, which was sweeping into eternity three hundred a day, immediately began to disappear, before frost or any other change in the weather, its artificial fabric being broken down by the beneficent hand of the American people." VI.