In the liberation struggle of 1821 most deaths came from epidemics and not on the battlefield. The besieged of Messolongion, after the exhaustion of food reserves, 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. In addition to a needle and common thread, ants were used to stitch up wounds, which were externally cleaned with raki.
Priorities during the struggle of 1821 were focused on meeting military and fiscal needs and little on addressing issues of public health, healthcare and medico-social welfare. 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 people 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".
This is what Professor Dardavesis said at the end of his speech, in which he referred extensively to the healthy living, clothing and food conditions of the vast majority of enslaved Greeks, which "were wretched during the period of the struggle, favoring the manifestation of serious diseases, from of which the main ones were dysentery, cholera, plague, smallpox and malaria, which cumulatively caused more deaths, compared to 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 in 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 about 3,000 deaths, while a typhus epidemic occurred later in Nafplion and other cities that were under siege.
The diet of the competing Greeks consisted mainly of bread, nuts, boiled corn and less often 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.
Improper nutrition caused dysentery, which further exhausted the weakened bodies of the 1821 fighters, while the symptoms of vitamin deficiencies, mainly from the lack of vitamin C, which caused scurvy, were evident. Access to supplies of healthy drinking water was often problematic, either because the available quantities were not sufficient for the 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".
"The scientific 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 Greek and non-Hellenic doctors from abroad, their total number never exceeded 500, while the existing needs due to the number of wounded from the war conflicts and the sick from the outbreak of epidemics were enormous.
During the Turkish rule, as the professor explained, several young people from various regions of enslaved Greece, coming almost exclusively from wealthy urban families, rushed to the universities of European cities to study, preferably Medicine, because according to Korai "...a beastly nation in the doctors alone are forced to feign some dayliness".
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 to keep the belief in freedom undimmed.
Some of them, climbing the ladder 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.
Rigas Feraios was surrounded and supported in his struggles by the doctors Emmanuel Ioannis from Kastoria, Polyzos Nikolaos, Kyritsis Ioannis, Nikolaidis Dimitrios, Fragos 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 national 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 the 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 Kombogiannites and the charlatans
"The practical doctors 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, which is why they were also called "medical surgeons".
They were also called "pharmacists", because, in addition to the medical procedures they performed, they prepared medicines and collected herbs, which they administered, on occasion, 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 scientists and practical doctors, during the liberation struggle, cabals and charlatans performed medical procedures and administered medicinal preparations.
Compogiannites and charlatans were pseudo-physicians with an interest solely focused on financial gain and a tendency to over-autologize their healing 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 in 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.
The Compogiannites 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 treatment they applied.
The therapeutic 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 in their application, so that in the event of a bad outcome of the disease, the responsibility would fall on the patient and his relatives.
"Health care and treatment"
Regarding 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 with serious wounds were taken to monasteries such as the Monastery of Oblos, Velanidia and others and later to rudimentary hospitals, which in the meantime had start to form.
The care of the wounds consisted of cleaning their external 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.
Regarding 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 years, was done as follows:Large live ants were brought in, they bit the lips of the wound, closed, immediately by cutting off their body, the head remained, thus forming a sufficiently strong stitch".
"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, elderberry, sarcotrophi, silphium, etc.), the use of which goes back to the time of Dioscorides and their detection 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.
In addition to the aforementioned drugs, pharmaceuticals and chemicals, some medicines were also prepared based on secret recipes, mainly by various empirical doctors, compogiannis and charlatans, who transmitted the secret of composition and preparation only to their descendants.
Opium was used as a hypnotic, for which the 11th article of the agreement, signed by the leaders of the Messolonghi Guard before the heroic exodus, states:they 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.
SOURCE:APE-ME