ABSTRACT
No generalized right to treatment for prisoners was provided by the court, only a right to not suer deliberate indifference in the failure or delay in providing needed care or in how such care was oered for serious ailments. Estelle v. Gamble involved a claim to inadequate medical care for a back injury suered by a Texas inmate. Oscar Gamble, in a sense, won the doctrinal battle but lost on his personal claim. e care might have been better, opined Justice Marshall, but it did not descend to the depths of deliberate indierence, the enigmatic culpable mental state fashioned by the court. Justice Marshal did not dene deliberate indierence; that would await the 1994 decision in Farmer v. Brennan (1994). He did indicate that a claim of negligent care (or malpractice) was not the equivalent of the cruelty; the wanton and needless iniction of pain protected against by the Eighth Amendment (Estelle v. Gamble 1976).
