Note 416 — Chapter XIV

See Thibaudeau, tom. ii., p. 272; Martin, tom. i., p. 315; Desgenettes, Hist. Médicale de l'Armée d'Orient, p. 97; Larrey, Relation Chirurgicale de l'Armée d'Orient, p. 117; Lacretelle, tom. xiv., p. 299. "I feel ashamed," says Savary, "to advert to the atrocious calumny; but the man whose simple assertion was found sufficient to give it currency, has not been able to stifle it by his subsequent disavowal. The necessity to which we were reduced of using roots as a substitute for opium, is a fact known to the whole army. Supposing, however, that opium had been as plentiful as it was scarce, and that General Buonaparte could have contemplated the expedient attributed to him, where could there be found a man sufficiently determined in mind, or so lost to the feelings of human nature, as to force open the jaws of fifty wretched men on the point of death, and thrust a deadly preparation down their throats? The most intrepid soldier turned pale at the sight of an infected person; the warmest heart dared not relieve a friend afflicted with the plague; and is it to be credited that brutal ferocity could execute what the noblest feelings recoiled at? or that there should have been a creature savage or mad enough to sacrifice his own life, in order to enjoy the satisfaction of hastening the death of fifty dying men, wholly unknown to him?"—Memoirs, tom. ii., p. 106.