When complaint of sickness is made by any of the prisoners, the keeper who has the care of the sick is sent for, and if the person is unable to work, he is taken to his room and shut up there to get well. No physician is sent for, except, perhaps, in one case out of fifty; and the patient is allowed no food but a dish of crust coffee and a piece of bread, once in twenty-four hours. This is his diet while he remains sick. When he is first shut up, he has an emetic given him, or a blister applied to his breast. This is almost always done, no matter what the complaint is; and should the physician attend twenty times at the hospital, he can scarcely ever see him. Sometimes the patient is bled, and all this is done by a man who has no _right_ to prescribe, and who is as ignorant of all medicine as he is of the feelings of a kind and generous sympathy; and done too in a place where the Law _forbids_ the use of medicine. But what are laws to tyrants? If the person has a firm constitution he generally outlives such cruelty, and returns to his work; but if his complaint continues, after much time, he is handed over to the physician, and takes his chance for life or death in the hospital. I do not mean to reflect, generally, on the conduct of the physicians. With but few _serious_, and a number of _minor_ exceptions, their conduct has been alike honorable to themselves and ornamental to their profession. The great difficulty with them, is, they have no _authority_ to do any thing; the most they _can_ do is to _advise_, in no instance can they _command_; and their advice is followed or not, as best suits the convenience or disposition of their master. If any officer in a prison ought to have supreme authority, it is the physician. Life and death are in his hands, and he ought to have all the power necessary to the full discharge of his professional duty. His prescription should be something more than _advice_, and he should have authority to punish all disobedience to his orders, and all cruelty or inhumanity to the sick. If the physicians of Windsor prison had been invested with this power, such have been their general reputation for skill and humanity, that many an hour and month of keen distress would have been spared to the prisoners, and more than one life been preserved.