CHAPTER III
THE SANATORIUM
Toward the end of November an old Scotsman, a member of my barracks (No. 5), was returned to camp from the sanatorium in Charlottenburg. I questioned him about the place. It appeared that no desperate illness was necessary to get there, as long as one was willing to pay for oneself instead of coming down upon the British Government funds ordinarily provided for that purpose.
This institution was a private medical establishment known as Weiler’s Sanatorium. The camp administration, by now in our own hands, had made arrangements with the proprietors to receive and treat such cases of illness or ill-health as could not be treated adequately in camp, where the accommodation in the infirmary, measured on civilized standards, was of the roughest.
Having a big scar on my left thigh, the only reminder of a perfectly healed compound fracture many years old, I believed sciatica a likely complaint to acquire. Except in extreme cases no observable changes take place in the affected limb, and the statement of the patient is the only means of diagnosis. Forthwith I developed a gradually increasing limp. With it I got grumpy and ill-tempered, the limp preventing me from taking my usual exercise, and this soon had its effect.
At regular and short intervals I went to see the doctor. To start with, I got sympathy from him, and aspirin. But nothing did me any good, though I admitted to an occasional improvement when the weather was fine and dry. At last I was taken into the Schonungsbaracke and put under a severe course of sweating. I stuck it out, but came dangerously near throwing up the sponge before I was released at the end of a week of it. By that time I had made up my mind that my sciatica ought to be cured, at least temporarily.
I kept away from the doctor for some time, but after a fortnight, during which my limp had gradually increased again, I was back in the surgery. He admitted that under camp conditions a lasting cure, even of a mild case like mine, was hardly to be thought of; but since the Schonungsbaracke was full, there was nothing for me “but to stay in bed as much as possible” and to swallow aspirin. This treatment suited me excellently well.
I kept hanging about the surgery complaining mildly until the first days of February, when the weather was rotten. I had a serious attack then. I knew the Schonungsbaracke to be still full, and this gave me the opportunity of asking to be transferred for treatment to the sanatorium.
My case being considered urgent, I left the camp the same afternoon, accompanied by a soldier and a box-mate of mine who had volunteered to carry my luggage—for I was unable, of course, even to lift it. With somewhat mingled feelings I looked my last upon Ruhleben for many a long day.
My new home had originally been intended for nervous cases only—a private lunatic asylum, to put it bluntly. The arrangement with the camp authorities for the treatment of all kinds of ailments among a population of over four thousand was taxing its capacity to the utmost. So many of our men were there at this time that they not only filled the original institution but were housed and treated in several dwellings leased by the proprietors in addition to the asylum.