At lunch time the sick convicts ask their keepers for permission to see
the doctor. They are kept waiting in line near the head keeper's desk.
The head keeper is a person of great power in the prison, only third in
importance of rank, but as he comes in daily contact with the convicts,
his good or ill will is felt more keenly than the warden's. The
discipline of the prison, the distribution of the mails, of the clothes,
underwear, shoes, all the details of management, are carried on through
him.
As we were waiting for the doctor, the head keeper came along to look us
over. He had a big brown face, and a large mustache covered his mouth;
two piercing gray eyes gave the impression of an unlimited reserve of
pent-up bile, anger and contempt, which at times flowed in a torrent of
choice and rare blasphemies.
"Damn you, wop! I'll cure you! You s----!" he shouted, and with both
hands he clutched the neck of an Italian, and shook him as savagely as a
terrier shakes a rat. His face red and with sickness in his eyes, the
unfortunate man tried to explain that he had a sore throat and a fever;
but without success. He only aroused another fit of anger.
"You're a faker, that's what you are! You're all fakers, every one of
you!" he yelled at us, and finished up by spitting on the floor. The
next moment he punished a convict for doing the selfsame thing.
A young doctor hardly out of his teens entered the old prison, escorted
by a convict carrying a tray filled with medicine bottles.
Sick prisoners are cured in the simple, old-fashioned way of having
mixtures administered to them, the medicine bottles being labeled
according to the contents, and the most prevalent ailments, which do not
require the remanding of the sick man to the hospital. Cough mixture
seemed to be quite popular, fever mixture less so, then followed
constipation and diarrhoea mixture, toothache mixture, court-plaster,
some pills, and various ingredients for venereal diseases, some cotton
gauze, and the indispensable large bottles containing salts and codliver
oil.
The visit did not take long. Those who had come twice on the line
without having been found sick were punished "against the wall."
After a short inspection the doctor ordered me to the hospital, without
allaying my fears by any diagnosis or declaration of a disease, but
cautioned me to take a hot bath every day, and to rub the skin with
sulphur ointment.