From the Richmond Examiner, 6/18/1864

HOSPITAL ICE. - No blessing from heaven ever came more opportunely than the abundant crop of pure, delicious ice, which was gathered last winter by the Government, and stored in the Government ice-houses for the use of the hospitals the present sultry summer. As we urged the gathering of a large supply then, events have proved that the bulk of it will be needed in the alleviating of the sufferings of the many thousand wounded in the hospitals in Richmond and elsewhere. Hundreds of valuable lives have been saved to the cause and country, that otherwise would have been lost. - Most citizens remember the terrible hospital scenes of June and July, 1862, when, in its sorest necessity, an ice famine prevailed in the city, and the wounded died by hundreds for lack of its cool, delicious, all health-giving and life-giving touch - The hospitals are now abundantly supplied, and the surgeons inform us that the absence of gangrene and other malignant forms of disease accompanying wounds, is attributable to the plentiful application of ice. The average number of deaths among the same number of wounded is something over fifty per cent. less this season than it was in the summer of 1862.

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