Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/164

148 varied slightly in dimensions, in shape, or in the number of prisoners that they contained. In the cell shown in the illustration on page 146 I noticed a shoemaker's bench on the sleeping-platform between the windows, and the foulness of the air was tempered and disguised, to some extent, by the fresh odor of leather. Even in this kámera, however, I breathed as little as possible, and escaped into the corridor at the first opportunity. The results of breathing such air for long periods of time may be seen in the Kará prison hospital, where the prevalent diseases are scurvy, typhus and typhoid fevers, anæmia, and consumption. No one whom we met in Kará attempted to disguise the fact that most of these cases of disease are the direct result of the life that the convicts are forced to live in the dirty and overcrowded kámeras. The prison surgeon admitted this to me frankly, and said: "We have more or less scurvy here all the year round. You have been through the prisons, and must know what their sanitary condition is. Of course such uncleanliness and overcrowding result in disease. We have 140 patients in the hospital now; frequently in spring we have 250."

Most of these cases come from a prison population of less than one thousand; and the hospital records do not, by any means, represent the aggregate of sickness in the Kará penal settlements. Many convicts of the free command lie ill in their own little huts or cabins, and even