OF HUNGER AND THIRST STARVATION. 125 



remarkable example was presented at the Millbank Penitentiary in 1823. 

 The prisoners confined iu this establishment, who had previously received an 

 allowance of from 31 to 33 oz. of dry nutriment daily, had this allowance 

 suddenly reduced to 21 oz., animal food being almost entirely excluded from 

 the diet'scale. They were at the same time subjected to a low grade of tem- 

 perature, and to considerable exertion ; and were confined within the walls 

 of a prison situated in the midst of a marsh which is below the level of the 

 adjoining river. The prison had been previously considered healthy ; but 

 in the course of a few mouths, the health of a large proportion of the in- 

 mates began to give way. The first symptoms were loss of color, and di- 

 minution of flesh and strength ; subsequently diarrhoea, dysentery, and 

 scurvy ; and lastly adynamic fevers, or headache, vertigo, convulsions, ma- 

 niacal delirium, apoplexy, etc. The smallest loss of blood produced syn- 

 cope, which was frequently fatal ; and after death, ulceratiou of the mucous 

 lining of the alimentary canal was very commonly found. Out of 860 

 prisoners, no fewer than 437, or 52 per cent,, were thus affected. The in- 

 fluence of concurrent conditions, especially of previous confinement, was 

 here remarkably shown ; for those were found to be most liable to disease 

 who had been in prison the longest. That the reduction of the allowance of 

 food, however, was the main source of the epidemic, was proved by the two 

 following facts: the prisoners employed in the kitchen, who had 8 oz. of 

 bread additional per day, were not attacked, except three wlio had only been 

 there a few days ; and after the epidemic had spread to a great extent, it 

 was found that the addition of 8 oz. to the daily allowance of vegetable food, 

 and ^ oz. to the animal, greatly facilitated the operation of the remedies 

 which were used for the restoration of health. 1 Very similar observations 

 to these were made by Dr. Jones'- on the prisoners confined in Camp Sumter, 

 one of the Southern prisons, during the late American civil war. The 

 prisoners numbered upwards of 30,000, and were confined in a space of 27 

 acres, with little or no shelter from the intense heat of a Southern sun, or 

 from the rain and dew, with festering masses of filth at the very doors of 

 their rude dens and huts, and with the greater portion of the banks of the 

 stream flowing through the stockade, a filthy quagmire of human excrements 

 alive with maggots. The diet consisted of only 1 3 Ib. bacon and 1^ lb. of 

 meal, and even this was sometimes reduced. As a consequence of exposure 

 to these conditions, in less than seven mouths 10,000 Federal prisoners died, 

 the chief causes of this frightful mortality being diarrhoea, dysentery, scurvy, 

 and hospital gangrene, the last often supervening on the slightest scratch of 

 the surface, or even on the bites of small insects. It is curious to notice that 

 contagious fevers were rare, and typhus unknown. Dr. Jones remarks, in 

 full confirmation of Chossat's experiments on birds, that whilst large numbers 

 of the Federal prisoners were utterly disgusted with the Indian corn supplied 

 to them, in which, for the most part, the husk was not separated from the 

 meal, yet that an urgent feeling of hunger was not a prominent symptom, 

 and that even when it existed at first, it soon disappeared, the muscular 

 strength at the same time becoming rapidly diminished, the tissues wasted, 

 and the mental faculties to the last degree lethargic. The diminished power 

 of resisting deleterious influences produced by insufficient aliment was well 

 shown on a large scale by the statistics collected by Dr. Chenu, of the rel- 



1 See Dr. Latham On the Diseases in the Millbank Penitentiary, 18-!4. A similar 

 example of the effects of prolonged insufficiency of diet was furnished at the Maisnn 

 Centrale of Nimes, for a highly instructive account of which by M. Boileau-Castel- 

 nau, chief physician to the ilaison Centrale, see Ann. d'Hygiene. Publ., Janv. 1849. 



2 See Dr. Austin Flint's Physiology of Man, vol. ii, p. 39, 18G7. 



