, and
Surgeon-General von Kohlreuter had amputated it. Fairly strong and
cheerful, this officer arrived safely at the Beresina. The passage over
this river was, as is well known, very dangerous, and von Happrecht had to
wait, exposed to cold, for some time before he could cross. Soon after
traversing on horseback he felt as if he had lost the stump; he had no
sensation in the leg the foot of which had been amputated. Unfortunately,
he approached a fire to warm himself and felt a severe pain in the stump;
extensive inflammation, with swelling, set in; gangraene followed and,
notwithstanding most skillful attendance, he died soon after his arrival at
Wilna.
So far von Scherer. Beaupre, speaking of his own observations of the
effects of extreme cold, gives the following account:
Soldiers unable to go further fell and resigned themselves to death, in
that frightful state of despair which is caused by the total loss of moral
and physical force, which was aggravated to the utmost by the sight of
their comrades stretched lifeless on the snow. During a retreat so
precipitate and fatal, in a country deprived of its resources, amid
disorder and confusion, the sad physician was forced to remain an
astonished spectator of evils he could not arrest, to which he could apply
no remedy. The state of matters remarkably affected the moral powers. The
consternation was general. Fear of not escaping the danger was very
naturally allied with the desperate idea of seeing one's country no more.
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