The Globe-republican. [volume] (Dodge City, Kan.) 1889-1910, 1898-10-06

L any OsV0e
Why SO many returning GONZALES
cents died after getting safely back
to their native shores, many of them
to their own homes, is probably not
hard to explain. The surgeons who
were blamed for starving the boys to
death in hospitals and at retention
camps, claim to know. They assert
that it has been too much, and not
too little eating. Officers and men
who even returned in apparently
robust condition from miasmatic sur
roundings were taken down with
malarial fever after arriving at home,
from eating too much. All the star
walton stories which the yellow jonr-
mails have talked SO necessarily,
should be accepted with large de-
gree of allowance. The stories told
by returning soldiers of the starva-
ton they endured would be ridicu.
lous in view of the abundant supplies
furnished by the government, if it
were not fact based on personal ex-
|perience that every man can vouch
for who has suffered from the fever
common in the south and in Cuba
malarial, climatic anil typhoid. It
is an established fact in medicine that
those who have the germs of such
fevers in their systems or are conva
lescing from them are the most raven
ously hungry of mortals. The ply
siological reasons for manifestations
of this sort are easily found. The
depletion of the system demands res
toration in the only way it can be
impaired by such abundance of nour-
ishment as will again build up the
wasted body. The stomach, less i'm
paired than the other organs, is in a
state of activity and Unsuitable hun
ger. The individual, left to his own
wishes would gorge himself to the
last limit of his capacity. But such
a proceeding would be fatal and the
wise physician, therefore, restricts
and diets his fever patients. Without
hesitation it may be affirmed that the
best cared for inmates of the best
provided hospital will in cases of
convalescing fever declare to his
friends that he has been starved
that the methods of the hospital are
starvation methods and that the mo |
tives for restricting the food supply
are mean and sordid. This of course,
is not the case at home, nor is it in
the army hospitals.
The returning troops manifest the
most greedy longings for food, and
especially those who have the germs
of fever about them are sincere in
the belief that they were not given
sufficient food while in the army;
some indeed do not hesitate to say
absolutely that they were starved.
The first longing of the men return
ing from Cuba. as recounted by the
Michigan commissioners, George
Loud, George Heating and Dennis
Donahue, at Mcntauk Point, was for
a square meal" A good, satisfying,
substantial meal. It is on record,
too, by the testimony of these and
other witnesses that the man with
fever in his bones was doomed from
the moment that he allowed his appe
lite to get the better of his precau-
ton, and gorged himself with meat,
fruit, cake, pie and stimu
lating beverages. To these demands
Of an abnormally hungry stomach
are ascribed most of the deaths that
have occurred since the volunteers
have returned to their homes. Ply
sicians know it, and they also know
how natural, and at the same time
how absurd, is the starvation plant
Of patients recuperating from fever,
IF those from whose systems under
he influence of a purer atmosphere
md home surroundings, the germs
II fever are passing away.-Wichita
Eagle.
An early and heavy snow on