The prison surgeon, one of the most humane and devoted of his class, Dr. Orzheshko, has described his experience covering fifteen years. In November, he says, “three hundred men and women dangerously sick lay on the floor in rows, most of them without pillows or bed clothing; and in order to find even floor space for them we had to put them so close together that I could not walk between them, and a patient could not cough or vomit without coughing or vomiting into his own face or into the face of the man lying beside him. The atmosphere in the wards became so terribly polluted that I fainted repeatedly upon coming into the hospital in the morning, and my assistants had to revive me by dashing water into my face. In order to change or purify the air, we were forced to keep the windows open; and as winter set in, this so chilled the rooms, that we could not maintain ... a temperature higher than five or six degrees Réamur above the freezing point.” This hospital was so saturated with contagious disease that it stood condemned, and deserved to be burned down. Official procrastination delayed its destruction, but in 1887 a sum of 30,000 rubles was granted for the erection of a new hospital, which is, presumably, now occupied. It was high time to make a change. The city of Tomsk, the capital of Siberia, the great centre of Siberian trade, flourishing, prosperous and increasing, naturally became alarmed. The free inhabitants were threatened with the spread of dire epidemic diseases. The local press, defying the censorship, eloquently denounced the horrible condition due to the vast accumulation of excessive numbers in the forwarding prison, and the resultant evils in sickness and mortality. The newspapers stated incontrovertible facts. The death-rate in the city of Tomsk was fifty per thousand per annum, sufficiently large, but in the prison it was three hundred per thousand. Typhus was the predominating disease, accompanied by smallpox, diphtheria, measles and scarlatina. This typhus constituted 56.4 per cent. of all the sickness in the forwarding prison in 1886, 62.6 per cent. in 1887 and 23 per cent. in 1888. The corresponding death-rate in these years was 23.2, 21 and 13.1 per cent.