Читать книгу Prisoners of War in Britain 1756 to 1815. A record of their lives, their romance and their sufferings онлайн

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And here again the Government Regulations were admirable on paper: the one point which was most strongly insisted upon being that the doctors should live on board the vessels, and devote the whole of their time to their duties, whereas there is abundant evidence to show that most of the doctors of the Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Chatham hulks carried on private practices ashore and in consequence lived ashore.

More will be found upon this unhappy topic in the next chapter of records of life on the hulks, but we may fittingly close the present with the report upon hulk diseases by Dr. Fontana, French Officer of Health to the Army of Portugal, written upon the Brunswick prison ship at Chatham in 1812, and published as an appendix to Colonel Lebertre’s book upon English war-prison life.

He divides the diseases into three heads:

(1) External, arising from utter want of exercise, from damp, from insufficient food—especially upon the ‘maigre’ days of the week—and from lack of clothing. Wounds on the legs, which were generally bare, made bad ulcers which the ‘bourreaux’ of English doctors treated with quack remedies such as the unguent basilicon. He describes the doctor of the Fyen prison hospital-ship as a type of the English ignorant and brutal medical man.