the nurses, I noticed, were women from 25 to 35 years of age, who had strong, intelligent faces, belonged apparently to one of the upper classes, and were probably medical students.
Early in the afternoon, after having made as careful an examination of the whole prison as circumstances would permit, we thanked the warden, Mr. Ivanénko, for his courteous attention, and for his evident disposition to deal with us frankly and honestly, and drove back to our hotel. It was long that night before I could get to sleep, and when I finally succeeded it was only to dream of crowded balagáns, of dead babies in bath-houses, and of the ghastly faces that I had seen in the hospital of the Tomsk forwarding prison.
Inasmuch as we did not see this prison at its worst, and inasmuch as I wish to give the reader a vivid realization, if possible, of the awful amount of human agony that the exile system causes, it seems to me absolutely necessary to say something, in closing, with regard to the condition of the Tomsk forwarding prison two months after we made to it the visit that I have tried to describe.
On my return to Tomsk from Eastern Siberia, in February, I had a long interview with Dr. Órzheshkó, the prison surgeon. He described to me the condition of the prison, as it gradually became more and more crowded in the late fall after our departure, and said to me: "You can hardly imagine the state of affairs that existed here in November. We had 2400 cases of sickness in the course of the year, and 450 patients in the hospital at one time, with beds for only 150. Three hundred men and women dangerously sick lay on the floor in rows, most of them without pillows or bed-clothing; and in order to find even floor space for them, we had to put them so close together that I could not walk between them, and a patient could not cough or vomit without coughing or vomiting into his own face or into the face of the man lying beside him. The atmosphere in the wards became so terribly polluted that I fainted repeatedly
