Frequently the faces, and other parts of those who recovered, were disfigured by the ghastly cicatrices of healed ulcers.

A special friend of mine, Sergeant Frank Beverstock--then a member of the Third Virginia Cavalry, (loyal), and after the war a banker in Bowling Green, O.,--bore upon his temple to his dying day, (which occurred a year ago), a fearful scar, where the flesh had sloughed off from the effects of the virus that had tainted his blood.
This I do not pretend to account for.

We thought at the time that the Rebels had deliberately poisoned the vaccine matter with syphilitic virus, and it was so charged upon them.

I do not now believe that this was so; I can hardly think that members of the humane profession of medicine would be guilty of such subtle diabolism--worse even than poisoning the wells from which an enemy must drink.

The explanation with which I have satisfied myself is that some careless or stupid practitioner took the vaccinating lymph from diseased human bodies, and thus infected all with the blood venom, without any conception of what he was doing.