and determined to preserve his consistency at the expense of our lives—very much after the fashion of that illustrious ornament of the profession, Dr. Sangrado, who continued his warm water and phlebotomy merely because he had written a book in praise of that practice, although "in six weeks he made more widows and orphans than the siege of Troy."
I could hardly help visiting on Dr. Sanger the reproaches his predecessor received at the hands of the persecuted people of Valladolid, who "were sometimes very brutal in their grief," and called the doctor and Gil Blas no more euphonious name than "ignorant assassins."
Any post in the medical department in a Yankee prison-camp is quite valuable on account of the opportunities of plunder it affords, and many of the virtuous "meds" made extensive use of their advantages. Vast quantities of quinine were prescribed that were never taken, the price (eight dollars an ounce) tempting the cupidity of the physicians beyond all resistance; but the grand speculation was in whiskey, which was supplied to the dispensary in large quantities, and could be obtained for a consideration in any reasonable amount from a "steward" who pervaded that establishment.
I ought not to dismiss this portion of my description of matters medical without adding that the better class of officers in the pen were loud and indignant in their reproaches of Sanger's systematic inhumanity to the sick, and that they affirmed that he avowed his determination to stint these poor helpless creatures in retaliation for alleged neglect on the part of our authorities! And when at last, on the 21st of September, I carried my report up to the major's tent, with the ghastly record of TWENTY-NINE DEATHS YESTERDAY, the storm gathered, which in a few weeks drove him from the pen, but which never would have had that effect if he had not, by his rudeness, attained the ill-will of nearly every officer about the pen whose good-will was worth having.
I ascend from pills to provender.
The commissary department was under the charge of a cute, active ex-bank officer, Captain G. C. Whiton. The ration of bread was usually a full pound per diem, forty-five barrels of flour being converted daily into loaves in the bake-shop on the premises. The meat-ration, on the other hand, was invariably scanty; and I learned, on inquiry, that the fresh beef sent to the prison usually fell short from one thousand to twelve hundred pounds in each consignment. Of course when this happened many had to lose a large portion of their allowance; and sometimes it happened that the same man got bones only for several successive days. The expedients resorted to by the men to supply this want of animal food were disgusting. Many found an acceptable substitute in rats, with which the place abounded; and these Chinese delicacies commanded an average price of about four cents apiece—in greenbacks. I have seen scores of them in various states of preparation, and have been assured by those who indulged in them that worse things have been eaten—an estimate of their value that I took on trust.
