June 5th, 1776
This evening, I attended Slant in the hospital to quiet his distress. There are soldiers by the camp of the sick who question closely as to whether we have previously suffered the smallpox. I showed the mark upon my arm and was admitted. I spake comfortably to him and fetched water both for him and for those around him, who had not received succor all day. I asked Slant whether our officers visit the dying, which is their duty; but he said that none will enter the Negro pest-house. I watched by his side until a regimental doctor — sent from the 14th, as we have none of our own — came by with febrifuge.
The ravages of the sick are become inhuman. Among those fully afflicted, the skin boils and runs with yellow matter. Trains of sores encircle the eyes and gather at the lips. Some are distempered out of all reason and nature, and grasp at all who go by with hands emaciated by the deprivations of fever. Some of the sick lie without motion, suffering an entire stagnation of the fluids. Equally pitiable are those such as Slant who display the fever, but who have not yet come into pocking — for they wait there on pallets amid the stench and disfiguration of their brethren — eyeing each minute the tears in the flesh, the dissolution of form and distemper of mind which may soon be theirs.
The women and children are not exempt, and the heart cannot be moved to greater pity than to see a child, stubby of leg, working his way along an aisle of mattresses, his lips aswarm with sores, as the infant Plato is said to have drawn bees to his mouth by the sweetness of his breath. Now that I am returned to my own tent, the mind relucts to recall the wailing anguish of these children, the manner in which they bat at their mothers and their own irruptions.
Many, of course, have escaped, the fever having run its course. The scabs harden and, at length, fall off; and gradually, the mind reasserts balance and health.
Others succumb, and in squalor see their last vision of Time.
Slant and I had spoken but twenty minutes when, hard by us, a youth who had held still for too many days suddenly burst forth with a scream of fury, half stood, and began scratching at his whole body with his fingernails, raking open the pocks, his entire frame shaking, yelling in ire at his own disordered flesh. His blood ran out copiously, and he sought to worry himself — thirsty for damage — even as we tugged on his arms.
We quieted him; I washed him with water as he wept. Slant, lain back down beside him, was in an excess of horror, but I was not at liberty to remain longer, and so, with anxious blessings, I made my exit.
I returned to my tent to find Miss Nsia
sitting with Bono. He endeavored, while they conversed, to tie her
hand to her foot with twine as a jest. She spied his design and
pulled away her wrist. 
I fear there are some who, themselves immune to terrors, are too deficient in compassion to —
Even now, they laugh.
It becomes us to forget the seductions of Venus when Hygeia weeps for want.