Today’s Awful Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Account of the death of Private James C. Perrine, Company I, 2nd Wisconsin Infantry, 1st Brigade, 1st Division, 1st Corps, Union Army, during the American Civil War:
Sophronia E. Bucklin, a volunteer nurse from Philadelphia, came to Gettysburg two weeks after the battle with the U.S. Sanitary Commission to assist the wounded. She stayed until the last hospital was disbanded in late November, 1863. On August 19, while working at Camp Letterman United States General Hospital, she witnessed the inexcusable death of Private Perrine. Nurse Bucklin vividly recounted:
One of my boys, from a Wisconsin regiment, whom we called Jimmy, became convalescent, and hourly expected a furlough to go home. He had not yet been taken from the medicine list, and one morning, as usual, took the prescription, but was soon compelled to lie down. He was seized with jerking movements, and great sweat-drops gathered on his cold forehead.
He sent for me, and, as I entered the ward, looked up and said, “It’s all up with me now.” I replied that we hoped yet to do something for him but he shook his head doubtingly, and motioned for me to sit by his bed. The surgeon was summoned, but he could do nothing to break the chill of death, which was slowly stealing over him. He reached for my hand, and retained it, till one by one his senses left him. Just before the last convulsive shiver ran through his veins, one of the attendants took it from his grasp, remarking that it was a bad sign for any one to hold the hand of another when death came to the heart.
He was then too far gone to realize anything, and at eleven o’clock he died. The last prescription, by some awful mistake, was deadly poison, and nothing could have saved him. I had often heard him talk of home and friends, but do not know if they ever learned how he died, when he saw the dear prospect of soon meeting them in the near future.
Culled from: Killed In Action: Eyewitness Accounts of the Last Moments of 100 Union Soldiers Who Died at Gettysburg