e
advantages of clean well-regulated wards, attentive nurses, and pure
ventilation. Imagine then the feelings of a sick wretch, stretched on a
canvass cot, who is first hoisted up the ship's side, and then lowered
down a dark hatchway (filled with anxiety and forebodings as to his ever
leaving the vessel alive) to the scene of misery which I am about to
describe--the lower deck of the Minden hospital ship.

This lower deck has on each side of it three rows of iron bedsteads, for
the most part filled with the dead and dying; an intolerable stench,
arising from putrefaction, which it is impossible by any means to get
rid of, salutes his descent; and to this is added the groans of
lingering sufferers. He may chance, God help him, to be lowered down at
the very hour of the inspecting surgeon's visits. The latter is seated
by a bed, having probably just performed, or in the act of performing,
an operation. The goodly array of instruments meets his eye, and he
wonders, as they are displayed, what these several instruments of
torture can be applied to; the groans of the patient fall upon his ear,
and his nerves are so shattered and debilitated by disease, that the
blood curdles to his heart. The inspector writes the particulars of the
case on a printed form, while the dressers are passing bandages round
the fainting patient. As soon as he is out of the cot which lowered him
down, the new arrival is washed, and clothed in hospital linen, ready to
be put into a bed. Not unfrequently he has to wait till room can be made
for him, by removing the corpse of the last occupant, just deceased. He
is then placed on it, a coarse sheet is thrown over him, and he is left
to await the inspector's visit, which, as that officer has all his
former patients first to prescribe for, may perhaps be not for an hour
or two, or more. At last he is visited, prescribed for, a can of
rice-water is placed at the head of his bed, and he is left to his own
thoughts, if the groans of those around him, and the horror that he
feels at his situation, will permit him to reach them. If he can do so,
they must be any thing but agreeable; and a clever medical man told me
that this admission into the hospital, and the scene which the patient
was introduced to, was quite sufficient, acting upon a mind unnerved by
disease, to produce fever. Excepting that the hospital was too crowded,
which indeed could not be prevented, there was, however, every
arrangement for the