Horrible sores spreading almost visibly from hour to hour, devoured men's limbs and bodies.

I remember one ward in which the alterations appeared to be altogether in the back, where they ate out the tissue between the skin and the ribs.

The attendants seemed trying to arrest the progress of the sloughing by drenching the sores with a solution of blue vitriol.

This was exquisitely painful, and in the morning, when the drenching was going on, the whole hospital rang with the most agonizing screams.
But the gangrene mostly attacked the legs and arms, and the led more than the arms.

Sometimes it killed men inside of a week; sometimes they lingered on indefinitely.