The impure air, the marked and rapid changes of temperature, and the foul
water, rendered the tenacity of animal life a simple problem, and when
joined to the deprivation of food, it became a matter of surprise that any
of the hapless wretches escaped with life.
The intense heat served to accelerate the destruction of the organism,
already weakened and sapped by the want of food and the putridity of the
atmosphere.
Life is always best supported at a moderate temperature, which, however,
is restricted to a certain degree, depending upon the forces of reserve in
the animal; and it is observed by experimentalists that all the vital
properties of the nervous centres, the nerves and muscles in adult as well
as in young warm-blooded animals, may be much increased by a diminution of
temperature.
This is shown by Brown-Sequard, in his illustrations of the influences of
prolonged muscular exertion on cadaveric rigidity and putrefaction.
Some few of the soldiers arriving from the army, with their systems
already saturated with paludal and animal poisons, and who were profoundly
cachectic, could rally very slowly if at all, under the combined
influences of the mephitic miasms and heat of the locality, even had there
been no fault in the alimentation. But there was a very great number of
the prisoners who were free from disease and debility, as they were direct
from their homes in the North, or from the healthy camps of instruction.
Scurvy and the vicious forms of zymotic disease, which depend upon
starvation and vitiated atmosphere, raged unchecked. The medical care
does not seem to have made any impression upon them, because of the
limitations of their materia medica, and the want of attention and
accommodations for the patients.
There does not seem to have been any sanitary regulations, nor the
simplest hygienic precautions adopted by the prison authorities. No proper
military arrangements to enforce order among the turbulent or insane, to
protect the weak from the strong in the struggle for a morsel of bread, a
bone, or a rag of clothing; no proper system of nurses to assist the
feeble within the stockade or the hospital, and administer to their wants.
Filth was deposited everywhere, because the enfeebled and dying wretches
had not sufficient strength to crawl down to the quagmire by the banks of
the stream. In the midst of these horrible circumstances, men met their
fate with singular calmness and stoicism. Nature strangely appears to
conform and temper the asperities of fate to men and animals alike.