Recollections of Windsor Prison; / Containing Sketches of its History and Discipline, with Appropriate Strictures and Moral and Religious Reflection

by of Vermont John Reynolds

QUARKENBUSH.

The case of this unhappy man will illustrate the danger and sin of permitting ignorant men, who never read a page on the science of medicine, to prescribe for the sick. Quarkenbush was taken very suddenly with a complaint in the region of the stomach and bowels, attended with inflammation and the most excruciating pains. He applied to the keeper who had charge of the sick, and he gave him the very worst medicine he could find for his case, which not only increased its violence, but prevented the proper medicine from taking effect when the physician was called. He lingered through about thirty hours of as much misery as human nature can bear, and died one of the most dreadful deaths recorded in history. Such was the intensity of the inflammation, that his surface was black with mortification before he died, and with the last strength remaining in his system, he threw up the putrid contents of his stomach, black and offensive as imagination can conceive, with a violence and copiousness of which the records of disease can scarcely furnish a parallel. He was opened by a trio of doctors, who paid richly for the information they obtained from such a mass of putrefaction, and immediately buried.

The proper remedy for his disease was physic, which should have been given frequently, till a cure was effected; but the only medicine given him, was opium, the effect of which is directly against what the case required. This was given in large quantities till the physician came, when the proper remedy was administered, but as on many other occasions, the doctor came "a day too late," and the death of the patient was, in the estimation of the keepers, the unimportant consequence.

Quarkenbush was a young man, and a wife and aged parents, with brothers and sisters, wept over his untimely grave. I was personally and intimately acquainted with him, and I know that his death was caused by an injudicious prescription. He was a victim to the practical regulations of the prison; and as there was crime in his death, some one must answer for his blood.