He shrugged his shoulders, but said nothing.[1]
From the balagáns we went to a "family kámera" in one of the log kazárms. Here there was the same scene of disorder and wretchedness that we had witnessed in the balagáns, with the exception that the walls were of logs, and the air, although foul, was warm. Men, women, and children were sitting on the nári, lying under them, standing in throngs in the gangways, and occupying in one way or another every available square foot of space in the kámera. I had seen enough of this sort of misery, and asked the warden to take us to the hospital, a two-story log building situated near the church. We were met at the door by Dr. Órzheshkó, the prison surgeon, who was a large, heavily built man, with a strong, good face, and who was by birth a Pole.
The hospital did not differ materially from that in the prison at Tiumén, except that it occupied a building by itself, and seemed to be in better order. It was intended originally to hold 50 beds; but on account of the over-crowding of the prison it had been found necessary to increase the number of beds to 150, and still nearly 50 sick patients were unprovided for and had to lie on benches or on the floor. The number of sick in the hospital at the time of our visit was 193, including 71 cases of typhus fever. The wards, although unduly crowded, were clean and neat, the bed-clothing was plentiful and fresh, and the atmosphere did not seem to me so terribly heavy and polluted as that of the hospital in Tiumén. The blackboards at the heads of the narrow cots showed that the prevalent diseases among the prisoners were typhus fever, scurvy, dysentery, rheumatism, anæmia, and bronchitis. Many of
- ↑ I learned upon my return trip that late in October 200 women and children were transferred to an empty house, hired for the purpose in the city of Tomsk, and that 1000 or 1500 other exiles were taken from the forwarding prison to the city prison and to the prison of the convict companies [arrestántski róti]. These measures were rendered imperative by the alarming prevalence of disease—particularly typhus fever—in the forwarding prison as a result of the terrible over-crowding.
