Caring for the health and wants of the sick.–Journal of Surgeon Alfred L. Castleman.

5th.–It is now six days since I resumed the charge of the hygiene of the camp. My first work was to have my tent struck and removed from the ground, that the spot on which it stood might be thoroughly sunned and cleaned. I then had the whole sprinkled with disinfectants. Have daily visited every tent since, to see that it was ventilated, by having the bottoms turned up for an hour or two, and that it was well cleaned. The result has been most striking. The sick list has already, in only six days, decreased fifty in number, though the seeds of typhus, sown some time since, still sprout, and occasionally give us serious trouble. Another trouble is off of my hands to-day. I have got a settlement with our Quartermaster, the first I have been able to get since the organization of the regiment. On settlement, I find my hospital fund to amount to one hundred and forty dollars. This sum, above the regular rations, will buy all the comforts my sick need, and will relieve the Sanitary Commission and our friends at home from the expense and trouble of providing those things for us. Nor will this be only temporary, for I find that I can, by good economy, after providing well for all the wants of the sick, still have a surplus of from fifteen to fifty dollars a month, to spare to general hospitals, or to the new regiments who have been less fortunate in providing a fund for this purpose.