All the cities of Lombardy considered it due to their honor to share in the distribution of the wounded.
In Bergamo and Cremona special commisions organized in haste are aided by auxiliary committees of devoted ladies. In one of the hospitals of Cremona an Italian physician having said: "We keep the good things for our friends of the allied army, but we give to our enemies only what is absolutely necessary, and if they die, so much the worse for them!" A lady, directing one of the hospitals of that city, hastened to disapprove of these barbarous words, saying that she always took the same care of Austrians, French and Sardinians, not wishing to make any difference between friends and enemies, "for," she said, "Our Lord Jesus Christ made no distinction between men when it was a question of doing them good."
In Cremona, as everywhere else, the French physicians regret their insufficient number. "I cannot, without profound sorrow," said Dr. Sonrier, "think of a small room of twenty-five beds assigned, in Cremona, to the most dangerously wounded Austrians. I see again their faces, emaciated and wan, with complexion pallid from exhaustion and blood poisoning, begging with heartrending gestures, accompanied by pitiful cries, for one last favor, the amputation of a limb (which they had hoped to save), to end an intolerable agony of which we are forced to remain powerless spectators."
Besides the group of courageous and indefatigable surgeons, whose names I would like to be able to cite (for, certainly, if to kill men is a title to glory, to nurse them and cure them, often at the risk of one's own life, merits indeed esteem and gratitude), medical students hasten from Bologna, Pisa and other Italian cities. A Canadian surgeon, Dr. Norman Bettun, professor of anatomy in Toronto, comes to assist these devoted men. Besides the people of Lombardy, French, Swiss and Belgian tourists seek to render themselves useful, but their efforts had to be limited to the distribution of oranges, ices, coffee, lemonade and tobacco.
In Plaisance, whose three hospitals are administered by private individuals, and by ladies serving as nurses, one of these last, a young lady, supplicated by her family to renounce her intention to pass her days in the hospital, on account of the contagious fevers there, continued her labors so willingly and with such kindness that she was greatly esteemed by all the soldiers. "She enlivens the hospital," they said.