In the liberation struggle of 1821 most deaths came from epidemics and not on the battlefield. The besieged of Messolongion, after running out of food supplies, were forced to consume all the domestic animals that existed, while some in their desperation resorted to necrophagy. They drank water from cisterns that were full of corpses. For the wounded of the battles, medical operations and procedures, such as the administration of anesthesia, blood transfusion, asepsis, antisepsis were completely unknown. Ants were used for suturing wounds, which were externally cleaned with raki, in addition to a needle and common thread.
Priorities in the conduct of the 1821 struggle were focused on meeting military and fiscal needs and little on addressing public health, health care and medico-social welfare issues. This less-told story - often shocking due to the harshness of the descriptions - was presented through extensive research in the literature by the Dean of the School of Health Sciences of the AUTH, Professor of Medicine Theodoros Dardavesis, who delivered the solemn speech entitled "Public health and the treatment of fighters during the period of the Revolution of 1821", at the event of the Aristotle University for the National Anniversary of March 25.
"Inadequate nursing care infrastructures, the limited number of health personnel and the serious shortages of pharmaceutical bandages, at the same time highlight the strength of soul of those doctors who offered their services in the struggle. Above all, however, they highlight the faith of the enslaved race for the vision of freedom, which through deprivations, struggles and blood became a reality, confirming the verses:"...Greatness in the Nations is not measured by the acre, by the heart fever is measured and the blood", said Professor Dardavesis at the end of his speech, in which he referred extensively to the healthy living, clothing and food conditions of the vast majority of underserved Greeks, which "were miserable at the time of the struggle, favoring the outbreak of serious diseases, of which the main ones were dysentery, cholera, plague, smallpox and malaria, which cumulatively caused more deaths than the losses on the battlefields".
Public health conditions
As Mr. Dardavesis mentioned, the desperate search for protection of the rural inhabitants contributed to the gathering of multitudes of people into organized and fortified cities. Their coexistence in squalid conditions, without waste removal mechanisms, with deficiencies in water supply and sewage infrastructure, often led to the occurrence of serious epidemics. The first recorded epidemic after the declaration of the revolution occurred in Tripoli, it was caused by exanthematous typhus and caused approximately 3,000 deaths, while a typhus epidemic occurred later in Nafplion and other cities under siege.
The diet of the competing Greeks consisted mainly of bread, nuts, boiled corn and rarely meat and fish. It also included wine and raki, while oil, it seems, was the only food product that existed in sufficient quantity throughout the race. In cases of sieges, such as that of Messolongion, the besieged, after running out of food supplies, were forced to consume whatever could be chewed. At first they consumed all the domestic animals that existed, such as horses, mules, donkeys, camels, dogs, cats, then mice and every other "unclean animal", and even animal skins were used to satisfy hunger. In their desperation, some resorted to necrophagy of corpses and even of their relatives.
The improper diet caused dysentery, which further exhausted the weakened bodies of the fighters of 1821, while the symptoms of vitamin deficiency were evident, mainly from the lack of vitamin C, which caused scurvy. access to supplies of healthy drinking water was often problematic, either because the available quantities were not sufficient for existing needs or because the enemy controlled the water supply sources and cut off the water supply to cities and regions, which were under the control of the Greeks.
The besieged of Messolongion drank the slushy water of the lagoon, the few wells and the two cisterns that were full of corpses. On this subject, Kasomoulis mentions in his "Memoirs", the following:"... the water of the tanks had become a strange mixture; whatever you wanted you could find in it:brains, entrails, blood, heads - and the Greeks drank and endured with all their might. indifference".
Scientist doctors during the revolution of 1821
During the last years of the pre-revolutionary period, the number of doctors, serving the needs of approximately 1,000,000 inhabitants, did not exceed 90. After the revolution and with the arrival in Greece of Greeks and Philhellenic doctors from abroad, their total number never exceeded 500, while the existing needs due to the number of wounded from the war conflicts and patients from the outbreak of epidemics were enormous.
During the Turkish occupation, as the professor explained, several young people from various regions of subjugated Greece, coming almost exclusively from wealthy urban families, rushed to universities in European cities to study, according preference Medicine, because according to Korai "...a beastly nation in the doctors alone is forced to pretend to be a certain day-to-day". The Greeks' universities of choice for medical studies were mainly those of Padua, Pavia, Pisa and Vienna, from which graduates with diplomas bearing the reference "Natione Graecus" returned to their enslaved homeland and helped to alleviate the pain of the ravages. of their brothers and in keeping the faith in freedom undiminished. Some of them, ascending the scale of the Ottoman Empire, obtained positions, such as the doctors Mavrokordatos and Nikousios who became Grand Interpreters. Some, like Hipitis, organized philhellenic committees in Europe. Others, like Adamantios Korais, became enlighteners of the nation or politicians of the revolution, like A. Mavrokordatos and I. Kolettis.
Riga Feraios was flanked and supported in his struggles by the doctors Emmanuel Ioannis from Kastoria, Polyzos Nikolaos, Kyritsis Ioannis, Nikolaidis Dimitrios, Frankos Petros and the medical students of Caracas Konstantinos, Perraivos Christoforos and Sakellarios Georgios. Dozens of doctors participated as members in Filiki Etairia, while several were benefactors of the fight such as Arsakis from Epirus, Dellaportas from Kefalonia, Sakellarios from Kozani and Flevas from Naoussa. Finally, the first Governor of Greece, Ioannis Kapodistrias, was a doctor.
Of the scientific doctors, relatively few, chose to get involved in the armed part of the uprising and offer their services to the fighters of the revolution. Those who eventually got involved were more concerned with the treatment of pathological conditions and little with the care of wounds and injuries, with the result that medical nursing care was based on Philhellenic foreign doctors and mainly on the so-called practical or empirical doctors, who had nothing to do with the Komboyanites and the charlatans
Practical physicians during the revolution of 1821
The practical or empirical doctors practiced the so-called "Popular Medicine", mainly in the mountainous regions of the country. They were particularly adept at reducing dislocations and fractures, treating wounds and performing minor operations, consequently they were also called "medical surgeons". They were also called "medico-pharmacists", because, in addition to the medical procedures they performed, they prepared medicines and collected herbs, which they administered, as the case may be, to the sick and injured. Practitioners were distinguished as dignitaries, healers and herbalists and were respected because they were close to the common people to whom they offered their services for free or for a nominal fee.
Combogiannites and charlatans
Along with the scientists and practical doctors, during the liberation struggle, compogiannites and charlatans practiced medical procedures and administered medicinal preparations.
Combogiannites and charlatans were pseudo-physicians with an interest solely focused on financial gain and a tendency to exaggerate their therapeutic successes to the point of teratology. They wore special clothing and covered their heads with a samarokalpako in which they obviously placed first aid medicines. In other cases, they placed the medicines in bags, which they hung on visible parts of their clothing, and for this reason they were also called bag-bearers. They were usually accompanied by an assistant, who chanted “doctor! medically! herbs for every disease!", while among themselves they used a special guild dialect.
Combogiannites and charlatans also had the nicknames "Vikoyatroi" when they gathered herbs from the valley of Vikos or "Matsokarides" because they held a club (mazuca), mainly to defend themselves from the attacks of the patient's relatives, in case of failure of the treatment they applied.
The treatment they recommended required, on the one hand, materials for the preparation of medicines, which were almost impossible to locate, and on the other, the adoption of instructions that were particularly complex to implement, so that in the event of a bad outcome of the disease the responsibility rests with the patient and his relatives.
Health care and treatment
As regards the health care and care provided during the period of the national renaissance, Mr. Dardavesis pointed out that it was commensurate with the existing level of medical knowledge of the time. Medical operations and procedures such as the administration of anesthesia, blood transfusion, asepsis, antisepsis and others, were completely unknown and the contribution of health personnel to the care of the wounded and sick was rudimentary.
On the battlefields, the slightly wounded received care, on the spot, from their fellow soldiers, while those bearing heavy wounds were sent for treatment in monasteries such as the Monastery of Oblou, Velanidia and others and later in rudimentary hospitals, which in the meantime had begun to be established. The care of the wounds consisted of cleaning their outer surface with raki and introducing into them an ointment prepared from the albumen of an egg mixed with common oil and raki. An ointment prepared from soap and raki was then applied to the wound, and it was followed, at intervals, by dousing it with raki, which seems to have been a therapeutic means of continuous use. In some cases, they disinfected the wound with hot fat, as Makrygiannis characteristically describes:"...I took the paluki from her leg and scalded it with vinegar. But it became a drum...".
The dressing of the wound, regardless of its degree of severity, was carried out with strips of cloth and small sticks or splints made of wood or tissue paper. Red-hot iron was used for the hemostasis of the large vessels, alcohol for the hemostasis of the capillaries, while heated wine mixed with common butter was administered to control bleeding due to chest wounds. For suturing wounds, in addition to the classic technique using a needle and common thread, General Makrygianni mentions in his "Memoirs" the use of ant heads.
For the specific practice of suturing wounds, Yiannis Vlachogiannis notes the following:"The stitching of wounds through the heads of ants, known to the empirical doctors of those times, was done as follows:large living ants, biting the lips of the wound, closed, immediately by cutting off their body, the head remained forming so they stitched sufficiently strong".
"Good volley" meant ...and a quick, painless death
The therapeutic approach to pathological conditions, as the professor mentioned in his speech, was empirical and rudimentary in nature. By way of example, the recommendations for the treatment of fevers referred to massages with oil and for flu symptoms administration of a decoction of dry figs and antlers or warmed wine with pepper. Warm butter was used to treat swelling and bruises.
The medicines, which were used by the scientific doctors and many of the empiricists, were mainly drugs (aloe, theria, cardamom, china, ginger, elder, sarcotroph, silphium, etc. ), the use of which goes back to the time of Dioscorides and their identification is easy in the flora of the Greek countryside. They were also certain medicinal and chemical substances (absinthe salt, borax, gum arabic, emetic trux, minion, nitrion, oxymel, etc.) and various preparations (balsamo di Tolu, elixir propriepatis, laudano di Barbaro, etc.) , which were supplied, when they could, from Constantinople, Smyrna, the Ionian Islands and Trieste.
Besides the above-mentioned drugs, pharmaceuticals and chemicals, certain medicines were also prepared based on secret recipes, mainly by various empirical doctors, compogiannis and charlatans, who communicated the secret of the composition and manufacturing only to their descendants.
Opium was used as a hypnotic, for which Article 11 of the agreement, signed by the leaders of the Messolonghi Guard before the heroic exodus, states:"...All the little children let the parents water them with opium if it gets dark so they don't cry." Salt water was used for swelling of the lower extremities. "Tatar nuts" were used as an emetic.
The lack of medicines and sanitary materials was very common. The besieged in the Acropolis of Athens mention in their document to the Administration, dated 17-02-1827, the following:"...The sick die unjustly because they do not have what they need; almost nothing, even if they are sick, they have neither ointment nor blond, no ties, but they stink and die...". The aforementioned highlights the conditions that prevailed during the period of the 1821 revolution in the field of health care and care of the freedom fighters. For this reason, the wish "Good luck" expressed, among other things, the desire for a quick, painless and heroic death.