I am putting htis in IMHO since I’m not referring to a specific book. It may still be the wrong thread.
In various books that I have read, you often read about prisoners being kept in some dank hole of a dungeon for years upon years, subsisting only on bread and pig’s whisker soup. Then they escape/are set free/whatever to wreak vengeance/proclaim their innocence/whatever.
My question is, you often hear about these people living to their 70s and 80s, and they’re hale and hearty! Wouldn’t all those years of bad living have affected their livers and hearts, and everything else to the point of cutting short their lives?
Just a WAG but I’ve always thought prison gave people plenty of free time to excercise and not eat junk food. The food might be bad but it might be better for them than the junk available to them outside.
That’d be kind of funny for the prison guard to come by with the news that Our Hero’s arch-nemesis has surfaced in Istanbul, which would ordinarily cause Our Hero to launch his master plan for escape and retribution, only to find that Our Hero has starved to death.
I have no idea. However, I have a semi-relevant anecdote.
My Grandmother and I and our tour group were on Robben Island for a tour a couple of years ago. Robben Island is were Nelson Mandela and a large number of other “political prisoners” were imprisoned for many years. I put the quotes in to emphasize that while that may be an appropriate way to describe Mandela, many of the prisoners were just non-white males who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Our tour guide was one of that variety of political prisoner. Conditions were bad, and much much worse for the blacks than for anyone else. I don’t remember details well enough to be more specific, but the quality and amount of food was one of the issues. We also heard about how Civil Rights observers were tricked into believing that conditions were less rotten than they actually were.
OK, all that is just background. After seeing other parts of the (former)prison, we took a quick walk past the cell which had belonged to Nelson Mandela and gathered up again as a group. My grandmother pointed out how happy she was that Mandela’s cell had had a small window. This was important because of Character in Novel(I think, it might have been a real person in a biography for all I recall) who survived long years in prison because he could see a little piece of sky which gave him hope.
Incidently, Mandela’s years of slave labor in the rock quarries did major damage to his eyes. Any other health damage that I was told about I have forgotten.
I don’t know about women, but men in prison (in my state) can’t have weights or work out on machines. They can walk a track and some of them stash gallons of water to lift in their cells. They do alot of push-ups and they may have a bar to do pull-ups.
A lot of them don’t work on their legs, though- they concentrate on getting a buff upper body. Then they develop ‘prisonlegs’ and they look funny, walking around with this beefy, muscular upper body and stick-thin legs.
Seriously, most prisons in the US offer the potential for a healthier lifestyle than a lot of 3rd world countries. Meals *must[i/] meet certain nutritional standards, medications for certain diseases are provided, along with proper monitoring, the opportunity for regular exercise, work, hobby, and spiritual development is provided also.
It’s all up to the person to make choices. They may not have the choices they want, but they do have options which can and do lead to a healthy life if followed.
Ok, a thread about prison and pig’s whisker soup should not normally lead to a post about Julie Child and French cusine.
But…I think she had something relavent to say. Asked about the health concerns of a rich fatty diet, as she was promoting, she said (I paraphase) the best way to assure good health was to choose your parents wisely.
My point here is, much as it will overcome too much cream, good genes are likely what will overcome too much abuse. And those are the ones who live to seek revenge. There will alway be some who will.
(and…forgive me if I’m mistaken here but I think that was Elenia’s question…how can you suffer abuse and live to a ripe old age, not…is the modern prisoner suffering abuse…)
Nononono you all have it wrong (except for betenoir)!
I’m not talking about modern prisons, where you have fairly good nutrition in many parts of the world.
Think back to the Count of Monte Cristo. He spends years in that dank prison cell. There is no work to be done. It’s true the Abbot has him do excersises, etc., but he’s only getting gruel and water, no vitamins, no healthy foods, very little protein, no fiber.
Is the human body really so tough? 10 years of drinking can do permanent damage to your liver, even if you are eating healthy, which is often not the case. So why does ten years of living under these horrible conditions not cause permanent damage?
This is something that always gives me trouble with suspension of my disbelief.
Elenia28 - I’m sure it would take some time to recover their strength, but I wouldn’t count a strong person out. Look at modern accounts of concetration camp survivors. Many people rescued from the camps (where their treatment was worse than in literary prisons) recovered to live long and vigorous lives. I think strength of will probably has to do with a lot of it. If you’re strong enough to survive those conditions, you’re strong enough to recover from them.
Well, you won’t get any meds for a cold. And fungal toenails generally only get treated with soaks and cardboard files, not lamisil or the other expensive drugs which don’t work half the time and run the risk of inflaming the liver.
Inmates have a right to the same standard of care of medicine that is in the community. That doesn’t mean they get anything they want; that means they should get what they need, same as the guy on the street.
And not everyone with Hepatitis C should immediately get interferon and ribavirin, despite some claims by certain practitioners.
70’s and 80’ in a medieval prison? often? I don’t think so. People at the top of the ladder rarely lived that long. Regular folks were lucky to live half that even as recent as my father’s lifetime. :smack:
You also said, “In various books that I have read”
I think that may be part of the problem. Don’t take my comments the wrong way Elenia it is a legitimate question in the sense that, if it were true that people often …etc.
What Qad was saying about modern prisons, no shit man. I have several family members that work for TDCj (TX Dept of Criminal Justice) Inmates get three squares that provide more than the necessary nutrition required by the human body. They get (actually better) health care than the average citizen. They get regular exercise and entertainment. If they dsire an education it is available, complete with degrees and certification. In some cases, jobs that PAY are available. (granted the pay usually isn’t much but not necessarily) I recall an inmate at one unit who was earning thousands od dollars a month at the state expense…he did very meticulous craftwork that was in high demand. He sold these goods for profit. I better get off of Qad’s soapbox before he takes it back.
I had an uncle survive prison camp after being captured parachuting into Normandy on D-Day. A big guy, well over six feet, he weighed 90 lbs when they carried him out on a stretcher.
Yeah, he recovered - even lived into his 70’s. It took him two years to recover to normal weight and health. So … it’s only an anecdote but it’s also reality. Make of it what you will.
I am sorry I can’t provide a cite somewhere, but having read many histoical novels, I remember reading that at England’s Newgate prison in the 1600’s the only way a prisoner could survive was for a relative to bring them food. If they had noone that cared about them, they wouldn’t be missed, so they let them wither away with very little.
If you are talking about real life cases, it is important to remember that, while the jails for the common man were hellholes and cesspits, important political prisoners were occasionally treated comparitively well in prison. They were often permitted to bring along servants and even pets. Some, like Sir Walter Raleigh, got a lot of writing done during their incarceration.
When Bloody Mary confined her 20-year-old sister Elizabeth to the Tower of London, the future Virgin Queen was accompanied by her ladies-in-waiting, who were allowed to leave the prison to buy her food. Elizabeth was permitted to walk the walls; and when her health began to go downhill, she could sit, under guard of course, in a walled garden. After a few months, Elizabeth was transferred to a royal palace in the country, where she lived under house arrest.
Although Elizabeth suffered depression during her state of imprisonment, she was probably living a better life than most inhabitants of Britain at that time. After her release, she lived about 50 more years.
