The hospital of the Áchinsk prison consists of three barracks, one for men one for women, and one for families. The first thing that astonishes you, as you enter the hospital building, is the intolerable [oduráiushchaya — literally "maddening "] stench, which makes an unaccustomed person sick at the stomach.[1] The wards are ventilated by means of holes pierced in the walls [and that in only a few of the rooms], but these holes are generally stuffed with rags by the patients themselves to prevent cold draughts. The water-closets are not only never disinfected, but never even ventilated; and the pools and masses of excrement on the floors show that they are rarely if ever cleaned. The sick have repeatedly begged the hospital administration to abate the stench, but without result. Insects of every possible kind are so abundant that they constitute the dominating population of the hospital, and the patients serve as their food. There are masses of filth under the beds, and the mattresses are so seldom changed that persons coming into the hospital for treatment frequently get at once two or three new diseases. The sick, for some reason, do not wear hospital garb, but go about in the common convict dress; and it is not unusual to see patients who have no shoes or slippers, and who are compelled to splash through the pools of the water-closet in their stocking-feet. The food is fairly satisfactory, although the meat is generally short in weight and the milk in measure. The number of attendants is so small that it is impossible for them properly to discharge their duties. One attendant, for example, has to look after sixty patients. The care of the sick is wholly inadequate, and after the evening "verification" [that is, in winter, after 4 P. M.], the doors are locked and the sick are left to care for themselves. No matter what may happen between that time and eight o'clock on the following morning, medical help cannot be had. The doctor's time is so occupied with private practice, and work in the city hospital, that he comes to the prison only once a day for an hour or two, while the hospital steward spends in the hospital only five or six hours a day. Such is our prison Bethesda.
— Áchinsk correspondence of the newspaper Sibírskaya Gazéta, No. 30. Tomsk, April 17, 1888.
With regard to the condition of the prison in Achinsk, our correspondent writes us as follows: "As soon as you enter the courtyard of the prison you notice the contaminated, miasmatic air; but the principal source of the contamination is the water-closet in the small corridor at the entrance to the prison building. Dante himself would have thrown down his pen if he had been required to describe the damp, cold, dilapidated cells of this prison. At night myriads of bedbugs torture every prisoner
1 When the governor-general passed through Áchinsk, the hospital administration had the wards thoroughly fumigated. [Editorial note.]
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