The men negroes, on being brought aboard the ship, are immediately fastenedtogether, two and two, by hand-cuffs on their wrists, and by irons riveted on their legs. They are then sent down between the decks. . . . They are frequently stowed so close, they can only lie on their sides. . . .In each of the apartments are placed three or four large buckets [for human waste]. . . . It often happens, that those who are placed at a distance from the buckets . . . tumble over their companions because they are shackled. . . . In this distressed situation . . . they give up and relieve themselves as they lie. . . .Their food is served up to them in tubs, about the size of a small water bucket. They are placed around these tubs in companies of ten . . . If negroes refused to take sustenance, I have seen coals of fire, glowing hot, put on a shovel, and placed so near their lips, as to scorch and burn them. . . .The hardships and inconveniences suffered by the negroes during the passage, are hard to describe. . . . The exclusion of the fresh air is among the least tolerable. . . . The floor of their rooms was so covered with blood and mucus because of the flux, that it resembled a slaughter-house. It is not in the power of the human imagination to picture to itself a situation more dreadful or disgusting. The surgeons employed in the Guinea trade, are generally driven to engage in so disagreeable a job by their financial situations. Source: Alexander Falconbridge, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa, 1788. Who was Falconbridge? How might his background have influenced what he wrote about the Middle Passage? How might the conditions on the ship have been connected to the diseases that were so common among slaves?