Martyria Part 12

XIII.

To form an idea of the awful mortality which reigned here, let us review the records of the hospital prisons, and the casualties of armies of foreign as well as our own country. These comparisons must, however, be received with much allowance, for the circ.u.mstances which led to death are very different.

In the prisons of Switzerland, before they were improved, the mortality was 25 to 35 per 1000. In the county jails of England it is reckoned at 10 per 1000; in the terrible hulks (Les Bagnes) of France it is 39 to 55 per 1000, including epidemics of cholera.

The average mortality of the London hospitals, where only the severer cases of disease and accident are received and treated, is nine per cent.

In the hospitals of Dublin it is less than 5 per cent.; in the civil hospitals of France it is from 5 to 9 per cent.; in the military hospitals of the same country it is much less; at Val de Grace it was 4 per cent.

for a period of forty years; at Vincennes it was 2 per cent. for a long period; at the Gros Caillou, for a term of eleven years, it was less than 3 per cent. out of 55,000 patients.

The mortality at Moyamensing Prison for many years was 1 per cent., and in the New York Penitentiary less than that for seven years. The average deaths in the prisons of Ma.s.sachusetts, Michigan, New York, and Maryland, was about 2 per cent. The death-rate of the rebels confined in our military prisons was small, comparatively: at Fort Delaware it was 2 per cent, for eleven months; at Johnson's Island it was 2 per cent., or 134 deaths out of 6000 prisoners, for the period of twenty-one months.

The loss at the rebel prison at Elmira is not known for the entire term; but it was much less than the rebel "Vinculis" desires to make it.

His own statements make but 4 per cent. during the worst month for instance: "Now out of less than nine thousand five hundred prisoners on the first of September, 386 died that month."

"At Andersonville the mortality averaged 1000 per month out of 36,000 prisoners, 1/36. At Elmira it was 386 per month, out of 9500, or 1/25 of the whole. At Elmira it was 4 per cent.; at Andersonville less than 3 per cent.

"If the mortality at Andersonville had been as great as at Elmira, the deaths should have been fourteen hundred and forty per month, or fifty per cent. more than they were."

The official records of Andersonville show that Vinculis is greatly in error; for, instead of fourteen hundred and forty, the great number he imagines, they were even more; for the figures show two thousand six hundred and seventy-eight for September, or more than fifteen per cent., and in October fifteen hundred and ninety-five, or more than twenty-seven per cent., and in the month of August three thousand men died, and on the twenty-third of that month one hundred and twenty-seven perished, or one every eleven minutes out of the number present.

XIV.

In the hospitals of the allied forces, during the campaign of the Crimea, which were established along the banks of the Bosphorus and at Constantinople, there were admitted, during the twenty-two months of the war, one hundred and thirty-nine thousand patients, and of these nineteen per cent. were lost during the entire period, or at the rate of ten per cent. per annum.

One hundred and ninety-three thousand patients were admitted into the French hospitals during the same period, and but fourteen per cent. were lost, or less than eight per cent. per annum.

The mortality of the military hospitals of the army of occupation of Spain in 1824 was less than five per cent.

The extemporized and regular hospitals of Milan, says Baron Larrey, received during the Italian campaign thirty-four thousand sick and wounded; of whom fourteen hundred died, or four per cent., or forty men out of every one thousand. The temporary hospitals of Nashville received during the year 1864 sixty-five thousand sick and wounded, of whom twenty-six hundred died, or four per cent. The numerous hospitals of Washington treated in 1863 sixty-eight thousand patients, and lost twenty-six hundred, or less than four per cent.; and, in 1864, the same hospitals treated ninety-six thousand patients (forty-nine thousand sick and forty-seven thousand wounded), and lost six thousand, or six per cent.

The department of Pennsylvania received fifty-six thousand patients in its various hospitals, and lost but two per cent. Twenty-nine thousand nine hundred patients were cared for in the medical and surgical wards of the fourteen great civil hospitals of London in 1861, and but twenty-seven hundred of these died, or nine per cent. The diary of the rebel War Clerk says, that in the hospitals of the rebel service sixteen hundred thousand patients were treated, with a loss of four per cent.; yet it appears from a surrept.i.tious copy of the quarterly report ending 1864, relating to the prisoners in hospital at Richmond, that twenty-seven hundred patients were treated, and thirteen hundred and ninety-six died, or fifty per cent.; more than half of these cases were those of diarrhoea and dysentery, and only seventy deaths from fever. It appears from the official data of the Surgeon-General's office, published in November, 1865, that eight hundred and seventy thousand cases of wounds and disease were treated by the medical staff of the United States army in 1862, and but two per cent.

were lost; also, that in 1863, seventeen hundred thousand cases were cared for, with a loss of three per cent. only.

XV.

The statistics of the great armies of Austria, Sardinia, and France during the Italian war, when half a million of men met in conflict at Magenta and Solferino, show, according to Boudin, that but six thousand four hundred and ten men lost their lives--of the French, three thousand five hundred and five; of the Sardinians, one thousand and forty-five; of the Austrians, one thousand eight hundred and sixty. It is shown by the records of the British army, that, out of the aggregate number of four hundred and thirty-eight thousand British soldiers who were engaged in the twenty-two great battles of the British empire from 1801 to 1854, but fourteen thousand men were killed, or died of their wounds, or three per cent. These battles embrace those of Egypt, Spain, France, Waterloo, and the Crimea.

Contrast these blood-stained records with this one instance of rebel cruelty at Andersonville. Of the number of the Federal soldiers who have been held in captivity during the rebellion by the rebels, more than thirty thousand of them are now dead. We know from official records that twenty-three thousand are buried at Andersonville and Salisbury alone.

XVI.

Up to the month of September, 1864, forty-two thousand four hundred prisoners had been received, and out of this number seven thousand five hundred and eighty-seven, or eighteen per cent., had died since the occupation of the prison--a period of about six months. During August the manoeuvres of Sherman alarmed them so much that they thought best to remove many of the prisoners to other stockades in Alabama and in North and South Carolina; but yet the mortality for the remainder of the year was for the month of September seventeen per cent. out of the number present; October, twenty-seven per cent.; November, twenty-four per cent.; and seven per cent. in December, when there were but five thousand inmates. This gives nineteen per cent. average for each of those four months, and indicates that out of the thirty-two thousand present on the first of August, but few thousand would have been living at the close of the year, had not Sherman compelled a reduction in the number of inmates.

Out of this number present in August, and distributed afterwards, I believe that but few thousand survived the system of treatment at the other prisons, and ever lived to reach home. Of these few thousand men who were finally exchanged, a great many have since perished; which statement will be admitted by all who have watched the phases of disease since the termination of the war.

XVII.

The records state that eight thousand died from diarrhoea and scurvy, and that three thousand more died from dysentery and unknown causes. Two hundred and fifteen thousand cases of diarrhoea were treated in the United States army in 1862, and but one thousand one hundred died; and of thirty-seven thousand cases of dysentery, but three hundred and forty-seven died; and but one death from scurvy per thirty-five thousand of mean strength. In 1863, according to the official records by Surgeon Woodward, five hundred thousand cases of diarrhoea and dysentery were treated, and but two per cent. died. According to the same authority there were but eight thousand six hundred cases of scurvy during the first two years of the war, and but one per cent. of these died. Fever was almost unknown, although the foul atmospheres and malarial miasms are generally so eager in their attacks, and so rapid in their effects; the autopsies of the dead men revealed to the astonished pathologist the utter absence of all the usual lesions of these diseases.

Boudin, of the French army, in 1843, in his "Essai de Geographie Medicale," observes that phthisis and typhoid fever are very rare in the marshy districts where intermittent fevers of a certain gravity prevail.

It does not appear that either of these diseases declared itself to any perceptible degree.

The effect of starvation was so strong that miasmatic disease could not gain a lodgment in the system, although every other condition was favorable to its production. Scurvy seems to be prominent in the alleged diseases. The combined influence of all the vicious conditions could readily have produced this form of malady in its worst shape; but it is one of those diseases which are clearly within the control of man, and for the existence of which, in this case, there is no excuse whatever. They required the treatment, practised with success in India, for those fluxes which are marked by a s...o...b..tic state of the system--potatoes and lime juice.

The neighboring plantations produced the potatoes in great quant.i.ties. In the everglades of Florida the lime tree, which furnishes a positive antidote, grows in wild luxuriance; and the woods everywhere, the corn and potatoes of their fields, furnish vinegar by distillation. If the plantations failed in their supplies of vegetables, the forests furnished, with trifling labor, an excellent subst.i.tute.

Vinegar, in the early history of war, was the chief and the sure reliance against the attacks of scurvy and malaria. To this drink chiefly, Marshal Saxe ascribes the amazing success of the Roman campaigns in the varied climates of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Scientific men, from Dioscorides to Orfila, have extolled its virtues in this respect. It is idle to say that they did not know how to make it, for the merest tyro in chemistry understands the method of fermentation and distillation.

XVIII.

It has been stated that the mortality was caused by epidemics; by dysentery or camp distempers; but the testimony of nature, as revealed by the scalpel of the dissector, does not admit of such statement. There was neither epidemic nor pestilence. There was starvation instead.

That a vast amount of this mortality was caused by the unfavorable, the needless, the cruel circ.u.mstances in which the prisoners were placed, no one acquainted with the phenomena of life and death will deny.

But as to how much more than the normal rate, no man has sufficient generosity and impartiality to determine.

This we know, however, that it is an axiom with all hygienists and military men, that the health of the soldier is always in direct ratio of the care taken of him. To give a just estimate of the normal degree of the mortality that was caused by diarrhoea, will indeed form a complex problem, since it is not only the last stage of starvation, but it is often produced by the decomposition of the blood by the dyscrasia peculiar to camp life. We observe it in all armies during the summer months, and that it seems to result from manifold causes. Although the predisposing cause is the dyscrasiac condition of the soldier, the determining cause is most always the quality of the food consumed, and the purity of the water used for potable purposes. Surface water mixed with confervoids and decomposed vegetable matter, and the deeper currents of water which pa.s.s through the rotten limestones, are, during the summer, the fruitful sources of intestinal disorders.

Those who have observed the influence of atmospheric changes upon disease, will comprehend why the diarrhoea curve followed the line of high temperature, and how it progressed in consequence of heat, even when una.s.sisted by inanition.

XIX.

It has been maintained by the rebels that many of the deaths were caused by nostalgia, or home-sickness. The truth of this remark we do not consider of sufficient importance to discuss in the extenuation of the crime, although we will admit that this disorder, which impairs the intellectual faculties and enfeebles the digestive functions, is often the cause of death among the French armies in Algeria, and the English in India, and that it can even become epidemic and lead to suicide. But the disease is clearly within the control of man.

We can find a more ready reason for the explanation of the derangement of the mind and nervous system in the dietary. The statistics of insanity show how sad or ferocious delirium may arise from starvation; and according to Combe, "a species of insanity, arising from defective nourishment, is very prevalent among the Milanese, and is easily cured by the nourishing diet provided in the hospitals to which the patients are sent."

The survivors have explained the causes of death of their comrades. The faces of these men told the story better than the tongue could describe.

The peculiar look of these men was common to them all: the shrunken and pallid features--the rough and blighted skin--the vacant, wild, and unearthly stare of the hollow and l.u.s.treless eye,--all told of the results of starvation. This look can no more be described than forgotten, when once seen. Wherever the returned sufferers landed, the bystanders were struck with horror by this fearful appearance.

XX.

The impure air, the marked and rapid changes of temperature, and the foul water, rendered the tenacity of animal life a simple problem, and when joined to the deprivation of food, it became a matter of surprise that any of the hapless wretches escaped with life.

The intense heat served to accelerate the destruction of the organism, already weakened and sapped by the want of food and the putridity of the atmosphere.

Life is always best supported at a moderate temperature, which, however, is restricted to a certain degree, depending upon the forces of reserve in the animal; and it is observed by experimentalists that all the vital properties of the nervous centres, the nerves and muscles in adult as well as in young warm-blooded animals, may be much increased by a diminution of temperature.

This is shown by Brown-Sequard, in his ill.u.s.trations of the influences of prolonged muscular exertion on cadaveric rigidity and putrefaction.

Some few of the soldiers arriving from the army, with their systems already saturated with paludal and animal poisons, and who were profoundly cachectic, could rally very slowly if at all, under the combined influences of the mephitic miasms and heat of the locality, even had there been no fault in the alimentation. But there was a very great number of the prisoners who were free from disease and debility, as they were direct from their homes in the North, or from the healthy camps of instruction.