"I saw terrified corpses in the streets, seated on the ground, leaning against walls, preserved by the cold, their limbs shrunken and stiff in the position in which Death had overtaken them. They died of hunger, of pain, and without physical or spiritual help. One dared not look at these poor creatures, and when one accidently met these pitiful objects one averted one's eyes involuntarily."
"There the bodies are heaped, and in several places where the wretches had gathered in houses, they were burnt to death inside without having the strength to get out. I have seen houses in which more than fifty corpses lay together, and among them three or four men were still alive, stripped to their shirts in fifteen degrees of frost."
"Sickness has made very serious progress in this city. In fifteen days nine thousand prisoners have died, and in one eighteen hours seven hundred."
"Seven thousand five hundred bodies were piled like pigs of lead over one another in the corridors; carcases were strewn about in every paft; and all the broken windows and walls were stuffed with feet, legs, arms, hands, trunks and heads to git the apertures, and keep out the air from the yet living. The putrefaction of the thawing flesh, where the parts touched and the process of decomposition was in action, emitted the most cadaverous smell."
All from Brett-James 1966 (See Bibliography)
Submitted for LIS 385T by Kathy Scott, October 1996
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