The forms of disease observed here were simple, and they seldom exhibited
positive indications, or, rather, the immediate effects and influences of
malaria. Neither of the four great pestilential diseases
appeared--cholera, yellow fever, plague, or remittent fever.
The diseases treated, or noted down rather upon the hospital register,
were generally the different forms of inanition, or of exhaustion of the
powers of life by the absorption of noxious vapors, or by the exposure
when in feeble condition to the extremes of heat and moisture.
The mortality among the patients removed to this place was perfectly
appalling. Nearly eight hundred men out of every thousand perished. Yet
this might have been foretold from the horrible condition, the
pre-arranged destitution of the hospital. Besides carefully selected
food, pure and dry air is indispensable for the recovery of a diseased
condition, and damp and vitiated air is sure to retard improvement, or to
induce complications.
Neither food nor healthy atmosphere were afforded.
The symptoms of the patients indicated the want of food, and were not in
reality the signs of actual disease. And the post-mortems made at this
hospital revealed the absence of lesion, save those consequent upon
starvation or prolonged suffering.
The minutes of this clinic are very extensive and particular, and they
exhibit in overwhelming proof the cause of death.
Life was prolonged to the last degree of the natural vitality, and among
the phenomena observed, the law of muscular irritability, as discovered
and explained by Brown-Sequard, was well illustrated. There was no
cadaveric rigidity; for the want of nutrition, the vitiated atmosphere,
the exposure to the vicissitudes of climate, had weakened and utterly
destroyed all nervous power. Immediately after the cessations of the
functions of life, putrefaction appeared and progressed with great
rapidity.