A journal, of a young man of Massachusetts, late a surgeon on board an American privateer, who was captured at sea by the British in May, eighteen hundred and thirteen and was confined first, at Melville Island, Halifax, then at Chatham, in England, and last at Dartmoor prison : $b Interspersed with observations, anecdotes and remarks, tending to illustrate the moral and political characters of three nations. To which is added, a correct engraving of Dartmoor prison, representing the massacre ofWaterhouse, Benjamin
History
A journal, of a young man of Massachusetts, late a surgeon on board an American privateer, who was captured at sea by the British in May, eighteen hundred and thirteen and was confined first, at Melville Island, Halifax, then at Chatham, in England, and last at Dartmoor prison : $b Interspersed with observations, anecdotes and remarks, tending to illustrate the moral and political characters of three nations. To which is added, a correct engraving of Dartmoor prison, representing the massacre of
Waterhouse, Benjamin
Dartmoor Prison; United States -- History -- War of 1812 -- Prisoners and prisons
[Q] Lest some might suspect that I have recorded this rough treatment
of the sick by an individual, as casting unjustly a reflection on
many, I shall here subjoin a passage from a Journal of a tour and
residence in Great Britain during the years 1810 and 1811 by a French
Traveller--a very popular work in England and much commended by the
Reviews there. The reader will perceive that he is much severer than
we are. I have been carried, says the Traveller, to one of the
Hospitals of this great town, supported by voluntary contributions. I
shall relate what I saw. The physician seated at a table in a large
hall on the ground floor, with a register before him ordered the doors
to be opened; a crowd of miserable objects, women, pushed in, and
ranged themselves along the wall; he looked into his book, and called
them to him successively.--Such a one! The poor wretch leaving her
wall, crowded to the table. "How is your catarrh?"--"Please your
honour, no offence, I hope, it is the Asthma. I have no rest night and
day, and"--Ah, so it is the Asthma; it is somebody else that has the
Catarrh. Well you have been ordered to take, &c.--"Yes, Sir, but I
grow worse and worse, and"--That is nothing, you must go on with it.
"But Sir, indeed, I cannot." Enough, enough, good woman, I cannot
listen to you any more; many patients to get through this
morning--never do to hear them talk--go and take your draught.--The
Catarrh woman made way for a long train of victims of corruption,
cases of fever, dropsy, scrofula, and some disorders peculiar to
women, detailed without any ceremony before young students. This
melancholy review of human infirmities was suddenly interrupted by the
unexpected entrance of a surgeon, followed by several young men,
carrying a piece of bloody flesh on a dish. "_A curious case_," they
exclaimed, placing the dish on the table; "an ossification of the
lungs!--Such a one, who died yesterday--just opened. This is the state
of his lungs.--See these white needles, like fish bones, shooting
through here and there; most curious indeed."--Then they handled, and
cut open, and held up between the eye and the light, these almost
palpitating remains of an human creature who breathed yesterday. The
symptoms of his disorder, and the circumstances of his death, were
freely talked over, and accurately described in the hearing of the
consumptive patients, who felt, I dare say, the bony needles pricking
their own lungs at every breath they drew, and seemed to hear their
own sentence of death pronounced.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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