CHAPTER III

THE SANATORIUM

Toward the end of November an old Scotsman, a member of my barracks (No. 5), was returned to camp from the sanatorium in Charlottenburg. I questioned him about the place. It appeared that no desperate illness was necessary to get there, as long as one was willing to pay for oneself instead of coming down upon the British Government funds ordinarily provided for that purpose.

This institution was a private medical establishment known as Weiler’s Sanatorium. The camp administration, by now in our own hands, had made arrangements with the proprietors to receive and treat such cases of illness or ill-health as could not be treated adequately in camp, where the accommodation in the infirmary, measured on civilized standards, was of the roughest.

Having a big scar on my left thigh, the only reminder of a perfectly healed compound fracture many years old, I believed sciatica a likely complaint to acquire. Except in extreme cases no observable changes take place in the affected limb, and the statement of the patient is the only means of diagnosis. Forthwith I developed a gradually increasing limp. With it I got grumpy and ill-tempered, the limp preventing me from taking my usual exercise, and this soon had its effect.

At regular and short intervals I went to see the doctor. To start with, I got sympathy from him, and aspirin. But nothing did me any good, though I admitted to an occasional improvement when the weather was fine and dry. At last I was taken into the _Schonungsbaracke_ and put under a severe course of sweating. I stuck it out, but came dangerously near throwing up the sponge before I was released at the end of a week of it. By that time I had made up my mind that my sciatica ought to be cured, at least temporarily.

I kept away from the doctor for some time, but after a fortnight, during which my limp had gradually increased again, I was back in the surgery. He admitted that under camp conditions a lasting cure, even of a mild case like mine, was hardly to be thought of; but since the Schonungsbaracke was full, there was nothing for me “but to stay in bed as much as possible” and to swallow aspirin. This treatment suited me excellently well.

I kept hanging about the surgery complaining mildly until the first days of February, when the weather was rotten. I had a serious attack then. I knew the Schonungsbaracke to be still full, and this gave me the opportunity of asking to be transferred for treatment to the sanatorium.

My case being considered urgent, I left the camp the same afternoon, accompanied by a soldier and a box-mate of mine who had volunteered to carry my luggage--for I was unable, of course, even to lift it. With somewhat mingled feelings I looked my last upon Ruhleben for many a long day.

My new home had originally been intended for nervous cases only--a private lunatic asylum, to put it bluntly. The arrangement with the camp authorities for the treatment of all kinds of ailments among a population of over four thousand was taxing its capacity to the utmost. So many of our men were there at this time that they not only filled the original institution but were housed and treated in several dwellings leased by the proprietors in addition to the asylum.

This was a large building with an extensive garden at 38 Nussbaum Allee, Charlottenburg. The appellation “Nussbaum Allee” distinguished it from the other houses, of which there were four, if I am not mistaken. I forget their names, however, with the exception of “Linden Allee.”

There were two classes of patients, whose food and accommodation differed according to the amount they paid, or which was paid for them by the British Government through the American Embassy. First-class treatment cost at that time twelve marks per day exclusive of medicines and special treatment. Without exception the expense had to be defrayed by the patient himself. In the second-class eight marks per day was charged. Neither class could expect private bedrooms for this, except where infectious ailments or other medical reasons made separate rooms imperative.

I had offered to pay my own expenses, to avoid delay by having my case referred to the American Embassy. It was a matter of indifference to me what class I was put into. The points of comfort I was looking for were easily opened windows, etc. I liked fresh air at any time, but now was particularly impressed by a theory of mine, that fresh air could be admitted in sufficient quantities only by windows not too high from the ground and large enough to admit, or rather to give exit to, a fairly bulky man.

The windows looked all right, but, from my point of view, they were _not_. They had diamond panes set in cast-iron frames; and even if they opened, a dog could not have got out of the aperture. All the corridor doors were kept constantly locked. There was no passing from one part of the building to another without the help of a warder or a nurse. The idea of having to sleep in the same room with six or eight people, one or two of them seriously ill, did not appeal to me. One of them was always sure to be awake at night. Straightway I applied for first-class treatment, for this would get me sent to the “Linden Allee Villa,” where these lunatic-asylum precautions would probably be absent.

I was taken there in the course of the following morning. My assumption proved correct, for things were different. Twelve patients nearly occupied the available accommodation. The staff consisted of only a nurse and three servant girls, and no military guard was about the place. The biggest bedrooms contained three beds. A garden surrounded the house, accessible through at least three doors and a number of windows of the ordinary French pattern. A low iron railing separated the garden from the streets, which in this part of the town were very wide, and which frequently had two causeways, lined with trees, and divided by stretches of lawn and thick shrubbery.

Not far from “Linden Allee” a big artery ran right into Berlin.