There was a wide discrepancy between Confederate law, which dictated that all spirituous liquors required by hospitals should be entrusted to the matrons, and how whiskey was actually dispensed at Chimborazo. Thoroughly familiar with the hospital bill passed by Congress, Pember made a formal request to Dr. McCaw for total jurisdiction over the monthly whiskey ration. The surgeon-in-charge protested, but then reluctantly released the barrel to the matron’s care. Flushed with victory, Pember wrote, “I nailed my colors to the mast, and that evening all the liquor was in my pantry and the key in my pocket.”

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Pember’s triumph heralded the beginning of trouble. She soon felt what she called “the thousand miseries of my position.” Staff members flooded her office with countless petty requests. Pember’s all-consuming passion–the care of the sick, wounded, and dying–kept her going. “My duty prompted me to remain with my sick, on the ground that no general ever deserts his troops,” she wrote. She eventually found some respite from her responsibilities by renting a room in town, to which she returned at night.

Meanwhile, her patients taught her something about courage. “No words can do justice to the uncomplaining nature of the Southern soldier,” she wrote. “Day after day, whether lying wasted by disease or burning up with fever, torn with wounds or sinking from debility, a groan was seldom heard.” In her war memoir, A Southern Woman’s Story, Yates described a particularly remarkable example of a young soldier named Fisher.

Fisher had suffered a severe hip wound. One night, after months of hard and diligent nursing, he turned over in bed and cried out in pain. Pember examined him and discovered that a sharp edge of splintered bone had severed one of his arteries. She immediately placed her finger in the tiny hole to stop the gush of blood, and summoned the surgeon. After looking at Fisher’s injury, the doctor shook his head and declared sadly that the poor man was beyond help.

Pember faced what she later considered “the hardest trial of my duty at Chimborazo.” She told Fisher there was no hope for him, and the gravely injured man gave her directions on notifying his mother of his death.

“How long can I live?” he asked.

“Only as long as I keep my finger upon this artery,” Pember replied.

Then, she later wrote, “A pause ensued. God alone knew what thoughts hurried through that heart and brain, called so unexpectedly from all earthly hopes and ties. He broke the silence at last.”

“You can let go,” Fisher said. Pember froze, unable to obey. The horror of the situation overcame her, and for the only time during her days at Chimborazo, she fainted.

As the war progressed, casualties multiplied and Pember’s duties increased. Massive numbers of incoming wounded caused shortages of medical supplies, surgeons and assistants, and hospital beds. Pember arranged for makeshift beds and continually washed and dressed minor wounds, preparing the more difficult cases for the surgeons. Soon, however, trouble began anew, and as Pember wrote, “if it is necessary to have a hero for this matter-of-fact narrative, the whiskey barrel will have to step forward and make his bow.”

It was the spring of 1864 when the ongoing whiskey problem escalated into a confrontation between Pember and a determined ward surgeon. Every day, each ward’s officer of the day ordered a quart bottle of whiskey in case a patient needed a stimulant during the night. The following morning Pember would inquire why the bottles were empty when no patients had required the elixir. The answer would invariably be that rats must have tipped the bottle over during the night.

The mystery of the disappearing whiskey rations might have continued for the duration of the war if not for a complaint lodged by a patient in a distant ward, who wondered why the liquor ration had not reached his building. Pember marched over and questioned the other patients, who all said that they had not received any whiskey. The men hinted that several champagne bottles hidden behind a certain vacant bed might easily be spirited away in the night.

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