मेरा आजीवन कारावास / माझी जन्मठेप (स्वातंत्र्यवीर सावरकर - काले पानी का ऐतिहासिक संस्मरण)

CHAPTER VI On Death-Bed While all these activities were carried on with zest during the later years of the war, I found my health completely shattered, as I wrote in the letter I had sent to my brother; and I was removed to the Hospital for rest and treatment. When my fever was ever hundred degrees on my body, and the dysentery had become very acute, the hospital authorities began to attend to me with greater care and undertook regular treatment of my disease. Every prisoner when taken to the hospital does get some rest in that place, and, therefore, it was no wonder that I got it because when I went in I was worse in health than any other prisoner. It was in the eighth year of my residence in this jail, that they gave me this relief. Otherwise whenever I was ill before, the only treatment for me was solitary confinement. Once removed to the hospital, the Superintendent saw to it that I was well-cared for. They changed my food from time to time to find out what suited me best in the present state of my health. This change in prison management, it must be pointed out, was the result of the criticism passed upon it in the Legislature and in the newspaper world of India; and my letters had helped materially in ventilating that grievance. But this reform had come so late, that, speaking for myself, the care that the hospital bestowed upon me did not lead to any change for the better in my declining health. My fever did not abate although they gave me dose after dose of quinine to drive it out of my body. And the quinine brought on dysentery and blood in the stools in a very acute form. I was unable to digest rice and milk which passed out as it had gone in. In the Andamans and especially at Port Blair, T. B., Malaria, and dysentery marched on together. They stalked the land and took heavy toll of its inhabitants. I was already in the grip of dysentery and malaria, and six or seven months later, the doctor himself suspected that I had a touch of T. B. In the hospital there were many patients around me who were stronger and better- built and yet affected by these three maladies. I had passed eight long years of imprisonment and hard labour, and my constitution had completely gone under. It would have been no surprise, if I suffered from all three of them. Dysentery took off my appetite for food, and I could not digest it. Want of food added to my weakness and shattered my nerves; the fever was continuously on me; only the last enemy was yet to come, though he was very near. In the prison-hospital I had nothing to entertain me except reading. And that was the only solace of my life. But my nervous debility made reading and light conversation a heavy tax on my constitution. The slightest indulgence in these brought on fever which rose to 102 degrees. So I gave up reading altogether did not keep any books near me to avoid the temptation, and lay on my cot with eyes shut. Time, already a tedious factor in the jail, became too long and too heavy to bear and I had to spend the