Prisoner-of-war escapes; World War, 1914-1918 -- Prisoners and prisons, German
This institution was a private medical establishment known as Weiler’s
Sanatorium. The camp administration, by now in our own hands, had made
arrangements with the proprietors to receive and treat such cases of
illness or ill-health as could not be treated adequately in camp, where
the accommodation in the infirmary, measured on civilized standards,
was of the roughest.
Having a big scar on my left thigh, the only reminder of a perfectly
healed compound fracture many years old, I believed sciatica a likely
complaint to acquire. Except in extreme cases no observable changes
take place in the affected limb, and the statement of the patient
is the only means of diagnosis. Forthwith I developed a gradually
increasing limp. With it I got grumpy and ill-tempered, the limp
preventing me from taking my usual exercise, and this soon had its
effect.
At regular and short intervals I went to see the doctor. To start with,
I got sympathy from him, and aspirin. But nothing did me any good,
though I admitted to an occasional improvement when the weather was
fine and dry. At last I was taken into the _Schonungsbaracke_ and put
under a severe course of sweating. I stuck it out, but came dangerously
near throwing up the sponge before I was released at the end of a week
of it. By that time I had made up my mind that my sciatica ought to be
cured, at least temporarily.
I kept away from the doctor for some time, but after a fortnight,
during which my limp had gradually increased again, I was back in the
surgery. He admitted that under camp conditions a lasting cure, even
of a mild case like mine, was hardly to be thought of; but since the
Schonungsbaracke was full, there was nothing for me “but to stay in
bed as much as possible” and to swallow aspirin. This treatment suited
me excellently well.
I kept hanging about the surgery complaining mildly until the first
days of February, when the weather was rotten. I had a serious attack
then. I knew the Schonungsbaracke to be still full, and this gave
me the opportunity of asking to be transferred for treatment to the
sanatorium.
My case being considered urgent, I left the camp the same afternoon,
accompanied by a soldier and a box-mate of mine who had volunteered to
carry my luggage--for I was unable, of course, even to lift it. With
somewhat mingled feelings I looked my last upon Ruhleben for many a
long day.
My new home had originally been intended for nervous cases only--a
private lunatic asylum, to put it bluntly. The arrangement with the
camp authorities for the treatment of all kinds of ailments among
a population of over four thousand was taxing its capacity to the
utmost. So many of our men were there at this time that they not only
filled the original institution but were housed and treated in several
dwellings leased by the proprietors in addition to the asylum.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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