The use of quinine during the Civil War.

  • Churchman, John W. (John Woolman), 1877-1937.
Date:
[1906]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The use of quinine during the Civil War. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    eight to one among the negroes, the tremendous economic t1] problem this disease presented becomes apparent. In the white and colored troops of the North from the beginning of the war to June 30th, 1863—that is before Gettysburg had been fought, or Vicksburg had fallen, or the draft riots had been quelled in New York—nearly 1,800,000 cases had been recorded under one of the four alvine fluxes; and, at a con- servative estimate, almost 60,000 soldiers had died from the disease. The Union had lost, from dysentery, in other words. an army twice the size of the garrison which made Grant [178J famous by surrendering to him, over five times as many men as the killed and wounded at Chancellorsville; troops equal to about three-fourths of the forces which turned the tide of the war by repulsing Lee's invasion of the North. In three Indiana regiments alone, representing a strength of 3000 men, the reports, though exceedingly incomplete and including only a part of the war, list 1567 cases of dysentery. The number of those on sick report for the fluxes was to the total of all diseases as, approximately, one to four. For the single year ending June 30, 1863—the year that began with the Emanci- pation Proclamation and ended with Lookout Mountain— nearly 522,000 cases of dysentery were reported with 10,554 deaths. Yet Chancellorsville was called a terrible and san- guinary conflict. In the Confederate Army similar conditions were prevailing. From July, 1861, to March, 1862, the Army of the Potomac with a mean strength of about 50,000, reported over 36,000 cases of alvine flux—740 cases, that is, to 1000 of mean strength ; and no doubt the medical records, destroyed at the fall of Richmond, would have shown a similar state of affairs throughout the war. The disease, said Surgeon Jones, destroyed and injured permanently more men than shot and shell. At Capt. Wirtz's notorious Ander- sonville prison for about 15 months during '64 and '65 nearly 18,000 prisoners were admitted to the hospital. Four hundred and fifty odd of these were wounded and about 16,000 suffered with a specified disease. The results were recorded in about 15,000 cases and the mortality was 73.7 per cent. Over seven thousand cases of diarrhoea were listed; and, ex- cluding cases not followed, 80.3 per cent of them died. In