Neither food nor healthy atmosphere were afforded.
The symptoms of the patients indicated the want of food, and were not in reality the signs of actual disease. And the post-mortems made at this hospital revealed the absence of lesion, save those consequent upon starvation or prolonged suffering.
The minutes of this clinic are very extensive and particular, and they exhibit in overwhelming proof the cause of death.
Life was prolonged to the last degree of the natural vitality, and among the phenomena observed, the law of muscular irritability, as discovered and explained by Brown-Sequard, was well illustrated. There was no cadaveric rigidity; for the want of nutrition, the vitiated atmosphere, the exposure to the vicissitudes of climate, had weakened and utterly destroyed all nervous power. Immediately after the cessations of the functions of life, putrefaction appeared and progressed with great rapidity.
In discussing the rate of mortality of this hospital, we cannot with propriety assume a standard for comparison, for nowhere can we turn to analyze results from similar causes. We may, perhaps, take the data and statistics of our own military prisons, but the contrasts are too fearful for credulity. We will consider these at length, with other comparisons, in the next Book.
"The truth is in the facts, and not in the spirit that judges them."
The want of system cannot be charged to the fault of the organization of the rebel Bureau of Medicine, for that was well arranged and strictly governed.
It may partly be ascribed to the general carelessness of the officers in charge, and partly to the desire of the rulers that the numbers of prisoners should decrease, and consequently their labors should diminish, no matter how, nor how quickly.
That there were men in charge of the patients who were destitute of all moral scruples, of all refined and humane sentiments, there can be no doubt, but there were a few men who did not partake of the general madness of the spirit of destruction, and who exhibited a tender regard for the sufferings of their fellow-men. The names of Thornberg and Head will always be preserved as among the only few redeeming acts in the story of the great wrong. The sympathy of these men was undisguised, and when protest failed to produce kindly impressions, or to bring alleviation to misery, they secretly sought to succor the dying men from their own scanty store at the peril of their lives.