The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
The following notes of my own case have been declined on various
pretexts by every medical journal to which I have offered them. There
was, perhaps, some reason in this, because many of the medical facts
which they record are not altogether new, and because the psychical
deductions to which they have led me are not in themselves of medical
interest. I ought to add, that a good deal of what is here related is
not of any scientific value whatsoever; but as one or two people on
whose judgment I rely have advised me to print my narrative with all the
personal details, rather than in the dry shape in which, as a
psychological statement, I shall publish it elsewhere, I have yielded to
their views. I suspect, however, that the very character of my record
will, in the eyes of some of my readers, tend to lessen the value of the
metaphysical discoveries which it sets forth.
* * * * *
I am the son of a physician, still in large practice, in the village of
Abington, Scofield County, Indiana. Expecting to act as his future
partner, I studied medicine in his office, and in 1859 and 1860 attended
lectures at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. My second
course should have been in the following year, but the outbreak of the
Rebellion so crippled my father's means that I was forced to abandon my
intention. The demand for army surgeons at this time became very great;
and although not a graduate, I found no difficulty in getting the place
of Assistant-Surgeon to the Tenth Indiana Volunteers. In the subsequent
Western campaigns this organization suffered so severely, that, before
the term of its service was over, it was merged in the Twenty-First
Indiana Volunteers; and I, as an extra surgeon, ranked by the medical
officers of the latter regiment, was transferred to the Fifteenth
Indiana Cavalry. Like many physicians, I had contracted a strong taste
for army life, and, disliking cavalry service, sought and obtained the
position of First-Lieutenant in the Seventy-Ninth Indiana
Volunteers,--an infantry regiment of excellent character.
On the day after I assumed command of my company, which had no captain,
we were sent to garrison a part of a line of block-houses stretching
along the Cumberland River below Nashville, then occupied by a portion
of the command of General Rosecrans.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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