Fifteen Months in Dixie; Or, My Personal Experience in Rebel PrisonsDay, W. W. (William Worthy)
History
Fifteen Months in Dixie; Or, My Personal Experience in Rebel Prisons
Day, W. W. (William Worthy)
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Prisoners and prisons
4th. The fact that hospital gangrene appeared in the stockade first;
and originated spontaneously without any previous contagion, and
occurred sporadically all over the stockade and prison hospital, was
proof positive that this disease will arise whenever the conditions
of crowding, filth, foul air and bad diet are present. The
exhalations from the hospital and stockade appeared to exert their
effects to a considerable distance outside of these localities. The
origin of hospital gangrene among these prisoners appeared clearly
to depend in great measure upon the state of the general system
induced by diet, and various external noxious influences. The
rapidity of the appearance and action of the gangrene depended upon
the powers and state of the constitution, as well as upon the
intensity of the poison in the atmosphere, or upon the direct
application of poisonous matter to the wounded surface. This was
further illustrated by the important fact that hospital gangrene, or
a disease resembling it in all essential respects, attacked the
intestinal canal of patients laboring under ulceration of the
bowels, although there was no local manifestations of gangrene upon
the surface of the body. This mode of termination in cases of
dysentery was quite common in the foul atmosphere of the Confederate
States Military Hospital in the depressed, depraved condition of the
system of these Federal prisoners.
5th. A scorbutic condition of the system appeared to favor the
origin of foul ulcers which frequently took on true hospital
gangrene. Scurvy and hospital gangrene frequently existed in the
same individual. In such cases, vegetable diet, with vegetable
acids, would remove the scorbutic condition without curing the
hospital gangrene. From the results of the existing war for the
establishment of the independence of the Confederate States, as well
as from the published observations of Dr. Trotter, Sir Gilbert
Blane, and others of the English navy and army, it is evident that
the scorbutic condition of the system, especially in crowded ships
and camps, is the most favorable to the origin and spread of foul
ulcers and hospital gangrene. As in the present case of
Andersonville, so also in past times when medical hygiene was almost
entirely neglected, those two diseases were almost universally
associated in crowded ships. In many cases is was very difficult to
decide at first whether the ulcer was a simple result of scurvy or
of the action of the prison or hospital gangrene, for there was
great similarity in the appearance of the ulcers in the two
diseases, so commonly have these two diseases been combined in their
origin and action, that the description of scorbutic ulcers, by many
authors evidently includes also many of the prominent
characteristics of hospital gangrene. This will be rendered evident
by an examination of the observations of Dr. Lind and Sir Gilbert
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