Many Federal prisoners held in Richmond, Virginia, when released from their respective POW camps (Libby Prison, Belle Isle Prison, etc.) were transported to Baltimore, Maryland hospitals for medical care. "In April 1864, Lt. Col. DeWitt Clinton Peters, Assistant Surgeon in charge at Jarvis Hospital, received a number of prisoners recently released from the Confederate Prisoner of War camp at Belle Isle, Virginia. He described the "great majority" of the patients as being:"in a semi-state of nudity...laboring under such diseases as chronic diarrhoea, phthisis pulmonalis, scurvy, frost bites, general debility, caused by starvation, neglect and exposure. Many of them had partially lost their reason, forgetting even the date of their capture, and everything connected with their antecedent history. They resemble, in many respect, patients laboring under cretinism. They were filthy in the extreme, covered in vermin...nearly all were extremely emaciated; so much so that they had to be cared for even like infants."
Many Federal prisoners held in Richmond, Virginia, when released from their respective POW camps (Libby Prison, Belle Isle Prison, etc.) were transported to Baltimore, Maryland hospitals for medical care. "In April 1864, Lt. Col. DeWitt Clinton Peters, Assistant Surgeon in charge at Jarvis Hospital, received a number of prisoners recently released from the Confederate Prisoner of War camp at Belle Isle, Virginia. He described the "great majority" of the patients as being:"in a semi-state of nudity...laboring under such diseases as chronic diarrhoea, phthisis pulmonalis, scurvy, frost bites, general debility, caused by starvation, neglect and exposure. Many of them had partially lost their reason, forgetting even the date of their capture, and everything connected with their antecedent history. They resemble, in many respect, patients laboring under cretinism. They were filthy in the extreme, covered in vermin...nearly all were extremely emaciated; so much so that they had to be cared for even like infants."
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A Prisoner At Libby Prison
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