land, but they were sweeping in their character, and were designed to arraign the humanity, honesty and intelligence of the Surgeon-General and the entire corps of medical officers of the Confederate army.
This charge had the desired effect, and was reiterated even by eminent medical men in the North. Thus the son of the Vice-President of the United States, Dr. Augustus C. Hamlin, late Medical Inspector United States Army, Royal Antiquarian, etc., etc., in his "Martyria, or Anderson Prison" says:
"Here came a medical officer of the highest rank in the Rebel army, and one of the most eminent savans of the South,, to study the physiology and philosophy of STARVATION. The notes of that FEARFUL CLINIC are preserved, and may some future day startle the scientific world with their clearness, their candor, their positive evidence of the cause of deaths. Thus the scalpel silences the argument, the reasoning of sophistry."
A similar statement has been made by Dr. Austin Flint, Jr., in his recent work on the "Physiology of Man."
It was clearly demonstrated in my report that diarrhœa, dysentery, scurvy and hospital gangrene were the diseases which caused the mortality at Andersonville. And it was still farther shown that this mortality was referable, in no appreciable degree, to either the character of the soil, or waters, or the conditions of climate. The effects of salt meat and farinaceous food, without fresh vegetables, were manifest in the great prevalence of scurvy. The scorbutic condition thus induced modified the course of every disease, poisoned every wound, however slight, and lay at the foundation of those obstinate and exhausting diarrhœas and dysenteries which swept off thousands of these unfortunate men. By a long and painful investigation of the diseases of these prisoners, supported by numerous post mortem examinations, I demonstrated conclusively that scurvy induced nine-tenths of the deaths. Not only were the deaths registered as due to unknown causes, to appoplexy, to anascarca, and to debility, directly traceable to scurvy and its effects; and not only was the mortality in small-pox and pneumonia and typhoid fever, and in all acute diseases, more than doubled by the scorbutic complaint, but even these all but universal and deadly bowel affections arose from the same causes, and derived their fatal characters from the same conditions which produced the scurvy. It has been well established by the observations of Blanc, Pare, Lind, Woodall, Huxham, Hunter, Trotter and others, that this scorbutic condition of the system, especially in crowded camps, ships, hospitals and beleaguered cities is most favorable to the origin and spread of fatal ulcers and hospital gangrene.
By the official reports of the medical officers of both the English and French armies, during the Crimean war, it was conclusively shown that notwithstanding the extraordinary exertions of these powerful nations, holding undisputed sway of both land and sea, scurvy and a scorbutic condition of the blood increased to a fearful
