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Post by sloanrodgers on Nov 9, 2010 18:52:28 GMT -5
A hospital next to a communal kitchen sounds like a deadly combination now. Before Pasteur would anyone during the siege have had a concept of germ theory? I'd avoid that mess hall like the plague.
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Post by garyzaboly on Nov 10, 2010 5:18:20 GMT -5
I think it was already established by 1836 that contact with certain ailment sufferers increased the likelihood of getting sick also. Bowie's isolation, and the fact that there were two different hospital sections, has generally given me pause to wonder. Just a theory.
Or, it may simply have been a case of officers meriting their own rooms, and that the low barracks hospital wing might have been meant as an officers' sick quarters. But there's nothing really concrete confirming this. Just more food for thought.
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Post by Paul Sylvain on Nov 10, 2010 5:27:22 GMT -5
Just speculating, but I think I favor the latter possibility over the first, Gary. It seems that plenty of people had daily contact with Bowie while he was down. Unless the "main" hospital was full, it might well have been a case of rank having its privileges.
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Post by Chuck T on Nov 10, 2010 9:58:21 GMT -5
To Gary or perhaps someone else: Does anyone know what access existed to the second floor of the long barracks. Gary's drawing shows an exposed stairway on the east side. I wonder if there was an internal stairway as well? I think the answer to this question could go a long way in furthering discussion on the practicability for the use of the second floor for a hospital/aid station during the siege. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, it would seem more logical to use some place at ground level and away from direct fire as much as possible.
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Post by stuart on Nov 10, 2010 11:25:15 GMT -5
Just speculating, but I think I favor the latter possibility over the first, Gary. It seems that plenty of people had daily contact with Bowie while he was down. Unless the "main" hospital was full, it might well have been a case of rank having its privileges. I'm all for simple solutions myself. The 1805 hospital if it still existed was just a sick bay/dispensary. If there were more patients than it could accomodate some or all of them are going to have to be stowed somewhere else. The only real distinction would be between urgent and non urgent cases as in somebody with a bullet wound is obviously going to need close care, while somebody needing bed rest such as the wounded still hanging around from Cos' fight just need somewhere relatively comfortable and nursing rather than medical care so I don't think we need to look for any kind of significance in two different areas being designated as a hospital or sick quarters or whatever.
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Post by Rich Curilla on Nov 10, 2010 14:01:22 GMT -5
To Gary or perhaps someone else: Does anyone know what access existed to the second floor of the long barracks. Gary's drawing shows an exposed stairway on the east side. I wonder if there was an internal stairway as well? I think the answer to this question could go a long way in furthering discussion on the practicability for the use of the second floor for a hospital/aid station during the siege. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, it would seem more logical to use some place at ground level and away from direct fire as much as possible. From all available sources, there was only one stairway. It was where Gary shows it to be, and, since it most likely originated in mission days, my guess is that it would have been stone and perhaps like the extant original one at Mission Concepcion in San Antonio. It was -- for the 18th. century convento -- centrally located with it's bottom step only a foot or two from the inside of the main entrance to the courtyard from the plaza. However, another access was mentioned in the 1772 mission inventory by Fr. Pedro Ramirez (as per George Nelson's book). He described two rooms downstairs (apparently flanking the entrance-way) and three rooms upstairs. One of these upstairs rooms is a guest room almost uninhabitable due to a collapsing roof. The other two are "living quarters for the missionaries." He says that the missionary room next to the guest room had "a trapdoor through which one descends to one of the rooms parallel to the main entrance." So are we to assume that it was via a ladder? Probably. That would not help in moving hospital patients up or down -- and there is no indication that this was still there in 1836. All said, the rear stairway still seems to be the only practical access. But remembering the wide "porteria" entrance way next to it through the west side of the convento, I see little problem with this. Of course, in the heat of a battle, I would think other areas would quickly become necessary.
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Post by garyzaboly on Nov 10, 2010 15:03:23 GMT -5
Just speculating, but I think I favor the latter possibility over the first, Gary. It seems that plenty of people had daily contact with Bowie while he was down. Unless the "main" hospital was full, it might well have been a case of rank having its privileges. I'm all for simple solutions myself. The 1805 hospital if it still existed was just a sick bay/dispensary. If there were more patients than it could accomodate some or all of them are going to have to be stowed somewhere else. The only real distinction would be between urgent and non urgent cases as in somebody with a bullet wound is obviously going to need close care, while somebody needing bed rest such as the wounded still hanging around from Cos' fight just need somewhere relatively comfortable and nursing rather than medical care so I don't think we need to look for any kind of significance in two different areas being designated as a hospital or sick quarters or whatever. According to at least two accounts by eyewitnesses, Bowie's original quarters were in the big headquarters building along the west wall. Yet when he becomes very ill he is put into an isolated room. I think there was recognition enough of the danger of contagion (witness 18th century smallpox military hospitals being built far from the main camps) to justify the idea that, by being moved from his regular room to one away from the everyday traffic of the fort, both he and the garrison were better off. That the low barracks hospital wing might indeed have simply accommodated additional patients on bunks or pallets is viable; so too is the idea that they might have been cases similar to Bowie's, viz., requiring isolation. We just don't know.
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Post by garyzaboly on Nov 10, 2010 15:16:33 GMT -5
To Gary or perhaps someone else: Does anyone know what access existed to the second floor of the long barracks. Gary's drawing shows an exposed stairway on the east side. I wonder if there was an internal stairway as well? I think the answer to this question could go a long way in furthering discussion on the practicability for the use of the second floor for a hospital/aid station during the siege. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, it would seem more logical to use some place at ground level and away from direct fire as much as possible. As Rich notes, the outside stairwell is the only one documented for 1836 (Sanchez-Navarro and LaBastida in particular), but I've often wondered whether there was additional access, too. Although S-N sometimes shows us the interior of rooms, neither he nor L-B showed EVERYTHING, so there's much we still don't know in this area. Sgt. Becerra noted that an Alamo cannon was fired into a room where fifteen hospital patients were kept, at ground level. Does this mean that this "hospital" was actually on the ground floor, or that the upstairs patients went downstairs to combat the enemy?
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Post by alanhufffines on Nov 10, 2010 15:18:57 GMT -5
Does anyone have a thought for where a hospital in town proper would have been?
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Post by sloanrodgers on Nov 10, 2010 18:03:27 GMT -5
I think it was already established by 1836 that contact with certain ailment sufferers increased the likelihood of getting sick also. Bowie's isolation, and the fact that there were two different hospital sections, has generally given me pause to wonder. Just a theory. You're probably correct, but I think most contagious people were probably quarantined because diseases were thought to be only communicable person to person through the infected that showed clear signs. I believe it was many years before the medical profession realized that disease could be spread through tolerant carriers (like Typhoid Mary), water, food, air and objects. When the public eventually excepted germs they still couldn't wrap their heads around little bugs surviving outside a cozy host. I guess that's why most diseases ran rampant until they were slowed down by folks with resistance or their infection cycle ended. It's good to live in the modern age.
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Post by garyzaboly on Nov 11, 2010 14:38:48 GMT -5
I think it was already established by 1836 that contact with certain ailment sufferers increased the likelihood of getting sick also. Bowie's isolation, and the fact that there were two different hospital sections, has generally given me pause to wonder. Just a theory. You're probably correct, but I think most contagious people were probably quarantined because diseases were thought to be only communicable person to person through the infected that showed clear signs. I believe it was many years before the medical profession realized that disease could be spread through tolerant carriers (like Typhoid Mary), water, food, air and objects. When the public eventually excepted germs they still couldn't wrap their heads around little bugs surviving outside a cozy host. I guess that's why most diseases ran rampant until they were slowed down by folks with resistance or their infection cycle ended. It's good to live in the modern age. I'm far from being an expert on medical history, but I've read enough military history to know that isolating patients with certain diseases was the general rule, even in 1836. Going back as far as the eighteenth century, the article on "Medicine" in the 1771 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica tells us that, of "mailgnant fevers," "This virulent vapour enters the body by the nostrils, fauces, and bronchia...hence the reason evidently appears, why nothing is more proper to guard against this disease than turning one's face from the patient, frequent spitting, chewing angelica, zedoary, or pimpernel, and smoaking tobacco...the venomous miasma is swallowed with the air, and insinuates itself in the salival juice...whence it assaults the head, brain nerves, and animal spirits. "Those who are obliged to be near the sick, must take care that the miasmata do not approach their vital juices, nor yet the salival." So the importance of keeping healthy people away from sick ones suffering from a "malignant fever," and avoiding the "miasmatic air" unless necessary, was well understood, as was the need to keep healthy people away from sick people with the visible sores and blisters of certain other diseases. The testimony of Alamo survivor Juana Alsbury essentially tells us this, in a nutshell: "Col. Bowie was very sick of typhoid fever. For that reason he thought it prudent to be removed from the part of the buildings occupied by Mrs. Alsbury. A couple of soldiers carried him away. On leaving he said: 'Sister, do not be afraid. I leave you with Col. Travis, Col. Crockett, and other friends. They are gentlemen, and will treat you kindly.' He had himself brought back two or three times to see and talk with her. Their last interview took place three or four days before the fall of the Alamo...She says she does not know who nursed him after he left the quarters she occupied."
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Post by sloanrodgers on Nov 11, 2010 17:11:54 GMT -5
Well, not an expert, but it sounds like you're more knowledgeable than I. That was a very interesting take on the understanding of disease during that time period. I was really just wondering if the common people knew how easily diseases were transferred in various ways. Of course quarantine of the contagious sick has existed for hundreds of years.
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Post by Allen Wiener on Nov 11, 2010 19:06:38 GMT -5
I'm not all that confident that they did, RR. How many people today still do not know enough to simply wash their hands before leaving the bathroom? I don't even like to think of the number of ignoramuses I've seen walk straight out of the men's room, seemingly unaware that there is a sink, soap and towels there.
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Post by sloanrodgers on Nov 11, 2010 19:53:43 GMT -5
Presently that's probably more a case of knowing, but not caring and believing that modern medicine can give you at least a fighting chance. A hundred or so years ago people were dropping like flies all around you and people had no assurances that they would survive the most common malady. I think Americans drank a lot of snake oil and rubbed on a good deal of Sloan's Liniment before quackery declined and real doctors figured out what they were doing. I used to know someone who would drink out of other people's soda cans. I think he would simply trust in God and his vaunted immune system to ward off deadly infection. Incredible, huh?
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Post by Rich Curilla on Nov 12, 2010 19:07:55 GMT -5
...and real doctors figured out what they were doing. Ummmm........ they have?
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