"from a hole in the ground" antedating

[Charles Doyle]

Back about 1993--that is, before HDAS was available--I wrote and submitted for publication an article entitled "The Proverbial Hole in the Ground," which appeared in the journal ANQ 8 (1995): 38-41.  It briefly discusses the formula and includes a quotation from 1862:

A Confederate doctor complained about the "miserable nurses" assigned to his military infirmary (those nurses were often soldiers on loan from active duty or convalescing patients), who did not "know castor oil from a gun rod nor laudanum from a hole in the ground."  That's quoted from H. H. Cunningham, Doctors in Gray: The Confederate Medical Service (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1958), 72.

--Charlie
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---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2006 10:20:15 -0700
>From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
>Subject: "from a hole in the ground" antedating
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
>
>Speaking of Civil War-era locutions, here's a colorful and significant antedating. If I remember correctly, this too is from a court-martial record (but it may have been a letter or personal journal):
>
>  1866 in Andrew E. Masich _The Civil War in Arizona_ (Norman: U. of Okla. Press, 2006) 101: So drunk that he did not know his ass from a hole in the ground.
>
>  JL

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