Researches upon 'spurious vaccination,' or the abnormal phenomena accompanying and following vaccination in the Confederate Army, during the recent American Civil War, 1861-1865 / by Joseph Jones.
- Joseph Jones
- Date:
- 1867
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Researches upon 'spurious vaccination,' or the abnormal phenomena accompanying and following vaccination in the Confederate Army, during the recent American Civil War, 1861-1865 / by Joseph Jones. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![1G Executive, Jefferson Davis, and the highest authorities of the Confederate Govern- ment to injuie the health and destroy the lives of these Federal Prisoners. On the 21st of May, 1801, it was enacted by the “ Congress of the Confederate States ot America, b That all prisoners of war taken, whether on land or at sea, during the pending hostilities with the United States, should be transferred by the captors, from time to time, as often as convenient, to the Department of War; and it shall be the duty of the Secretary of War, with the approval of the President, to issue such instructions to the Quartermaster General and his subordinates, as shall provide for the safe custody and sustenance of prisoners of war; and the rations furnished prisoners of war shall be the same in quantity and quality as those fur- nished enlisted men in the army of the Confederacy.” By act of February 17,1864 the Quartermaster General was relieved of this duty, and the Commissary Genera] of Subsistence was ordered to provide for the sustenance of prisoners of war. According to General Orders No. 159, Adjutant and Inspector General’s Office, “hospitals for prisoners of war are placed on the same footing as other Confederate States hospitals, in all respects, and will be managed accordingly.” The Federal prisoners were removed to South-western Georgia in the early part of 1864, not only to secure a place of confinement more remote than Richmond and other large towns, from the operations of the United States forces, but also to secure a more abundant and easy supply of food. As far as my experience extends, no person who had been reai-ed upon wheat bread, and who was held in captivity for any length of time, could retain his health and escape either scurvy or diarrhoea, if confined to the Confederate ration (issued to the soldier in the field and hospital) of unbolted corn meal and bacon. The large armies of the Confederacy suffered more than once from scurvy, and as the war progressed, secondary hemorrhage and hospital gangrene became fearfully prevalent from the deteriorated condition of the systems of the troops, dependent upon the prolonged use of salt meat. And but for the extra supplies received from home and from the various benevolent State institutions, scurvy and diarrhoea and dysen- tery would have been still farther prevalent.” It was believed by the citizens of the Southern States, that the Confederate au- thorities desired to effect a continuous, and speedy exchange of prisoners of war in their hands, on the ground that the retention of these soldiers in captivity was a great calamity, not only entailing heavy expenditure of the scanty means of sub- sistence, already insufficient to support their suffering, half-starved, half-clad and unpaid armies, struggling in the field with overwhelming numbers, and embarrassing their imperfeet and dilapidated lines of communication; but also as depriving them of the services of a veteran army fully equal to one-third the numbers actively en- gaged in the field; and the history of subsequent events have shown that the reten- tion in captivity of the Confederate prisoners was one of the efficient causes of the final and complete overthrow of the Confederate Government. * * * It is my honest belief that if the exhausted condition of the Confederate Gov- ernment, with its bankrupt currency, with its retreating and constantly diminishing armies, with the apparent impossibility of filling up the vacancies by death and de- sertion and sickness, and of gathering a guard of reserves of sufficient strength to allow of the proper enlargement of the Military Prison, and with a country torn and](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22346892_0018.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
