suits of clothing for the smallpox patients (prisoners), to enable us to begin the burning process at once, until the question of issue is decided at Washington.

I am, colonel, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

CHARLES S. TRIPLER,

Surgeon, U. S. Army, Medical Director.

[Indorsement.]

SURGEON-GENERAL'S OFFICE, April 7, 1864.

Respectfully referred to Colonel W. Hoffman, U. S. Army, Commissary-General of Prisoners of War. The necessity for ample hospital accommodations is greater with prisoners than with an equal number of persons under other circumstances, and the immediate completion of the proposed buildings is recommended.

J. K. BARNES,

Acting Surgeon-General.

[Inclosure.]

OFFICE PRISON BARRACKS HOSPITAL,

Rock Island, Ill., March 29, 1864.

[Surg. CHARLES S. TRIPLER:]

DOCTOR: In compliance with your communication of March 23 I transmit the corrected weekly reports returned by your order.

I have the honor to submit the following statement of the present condition of the sick and hospital accommodation at this post, as also a brief history of my connection with it. I also inclose a copy of a communication addressed to the commandant of the post urging the speedy completion of the new hospital buildings.

I reported here March 4, in obedience to an order from the assistant surgeon-general's office, to relieve Asst. Surg. M. K. Moxley, U. S. Volunteers, as surgeon in charge. I found the morning report of sick in quarters 350, in hospital 715, of whom 420 were in the variola hospital, which consists of six wards in separate pavilions 24 by 150 and 12 feet high, of which 20 feet is used as a kitchen. Four of these buildings last erected have ridge ventilation. In these six were crowded at one time 485 patients, giving but an average [of] 460 feet to each man, an allowance entirely too low in ordinary diseases and alarmingly so where a large percentage of the cases are distinct or confluent variola.

The prison hospital is situated in ten barracks 22 by 102 feet and 10 feet high, with ridge ventilation. Of each 20 feet is cut off for kitchen purposes, leaving a room 22 by 80 feet, in which are crowded forty bunks, giving 440 cubic feet of air and 44 square feet of surface to each. of these four are occupied by nurses, the two cooks and two washers sleeping in the kitchen.

These wards are furnished with bunks to hold straw and on these blankets are spread. Bed sacks are used in but few. Two of these barracks and two in the prison had been used for smallpox and vacated just before my arrival. They were cleansed, whitewashed, and furnished with iron bedsteads and new clothing. One of them is now used to separate all cases of erysipelas, the other the worst cases of pneumonia and fever. I have the means of furnishing other wards the same as these, but have no means of washing the bed clothes, and I have considered it advisable to make improvements as lay in my