The barracks numbered 16 and 17 were named the "care" and "rest" barracks respectively.

Because of the lack of necessary care, clothing and medical treatment, certain diseases reached epidemic proportions, illnesses such as circulatory collapse, tuberculosis, deficiency diseases (phlegmon, dropsy), pneumonia, blood poisoning or intestinal infections (dysentery). Those ill with typhus were simply crammed into trucks and delivered to an extermination camp.

The seriously ill and starving waited in vain for medical help. This is why the prisoners avoided the hospital barracks and were driven there only by desperation. Whenever possible they preferred to be treated by the doctors who were prisoners themselves. According to the prisoners there were only two groups of inmates: the healthy and the dead. Ill prisoners simply didn’t exist – not for long, at any rate.

Several doctors did duty in the Flossenbuerg concentration camp. Especially noteworthy for his cruelty was Dr. Heinrich Schmitz, who, in his period of service between May 1944 and the end of that year, carried out senseless show operations, as well as numerous "experiments" and medical murders.

Many of the experiments on people in the concentration camps were justified by appealing to the Nazi theories about race.