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HIST 6216/MLIS 7886 Student Guide 9: Causes of Illness

Christopher Skipper W.W. Knight Collection
Lack of adequate hygiene, dietary deficiencies and battle wounds led many soldiers to battle diseases during the war. Pneumonia, typhoid, diarrhea/dysentery, measles, and malaria were the predominant illnesses. Altogether, two-thirds of the approximately 660,000 deaths of soldiers were caused by uncontrolled infectious diseases
This statistic is particularly interesting as about two-thirds (22/36) of the letters that W.W. Knight wrote home included mentions of illnesses that were spreading around camp.

J S Sartin, “Infectious Diseases during the Civil War: The Triumph of the ‘Third Army,’” Clinical Infectious Diseases : An Official Publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America 16, no. 4 (1993): 580–84, https://doi.org/10.1093/clind/16.4.580. 

 

 

Inadequate Rations and Stolen Food - November 9, 1862
 

W.W. Knight discusses the current ration situation and suggests that there is foul play in the ration system. He mentions that soldiers that get food sent home often never receive it because it is stolen. Knight says that the soldiers are standing in marsh water day and night without shelter or fire. He points out that the conditions are making the men sick.

 

We do not get to[sic] much to eat now that is of meat, we get plenty meal but we can not eat it, it is old and bitter. We get right [smarts?] of rice but not get any grease and but one pound bacon for fifteen days and that will [not?] grease much rice or any thing else. Get a pound of beef six days in the week but we eat it stewed or broiled if one get anything from home he set over it all the time or they will steal it all from him in a few hours [cut-off] this is not very incouraging[sic], but it is so in the camps around here. If accounts we get [from] other places be true we get help to eat [there?] other division of the army. I have not the least doubt but there is foul play done in the ration line here, we have to do a good deal of picket duty of the worst [kind? cut off]. We have to stand on dams in the marsh day [and] night without shelter or fire when it rains [cut-off] not even a place to sit down, only in the mud and water. I hope there is better times coming and not far ahead. I would not care if it did not make the men sick so bad, I hope the future has a bright [leaf?] in store for us, all that lives to enjoy it.

 

 

 

Pigs to the Water - June 3, 1863 Letter
 

W.W. Knight describes the unsanitary conditions and lack of food and clean water. He expresses his disgust at witnessing some of the other soldiers bathing and washing their soiled clothes in their only source of water, comparing them to animals (pigs). Lack of clean water contributes to the spread of disease as well as other health issues such as dehydration and nutrient deficiency.

 

"...the companies are no better off than our[s]. When we are stoped[sic], we get enough to eat, but when
we are marching we do not have any chance to cook enough to eat and water to cook with is often not
to be had. We marched seven miles from day after sunset. We stopped to camp where it had been
represented, we could get water, but it was not there to get and [five?] had to come seven miles further
before we could get it and then there was not enough and what there was very bad. I will describe the
kind of water we have been using until we come to this place. That is if your imagination will help draw
the picture, it is in holes in the cracks [of] the soil, slick yellow mud void of sand. The water is yellow, muddy stuff with a green scum on it, but seldom over a foot deep."
"Some times half dozen holes and no more near enough to be got at and that the chance for several thousand men and a great many of them like hogs if they are not minded out, they will be in it washing there[sic] hands, face, feet or old, nasty clothes.  it[sic] astonishing how many men there are in this world that are only animals in human form , ask one and he will tell you it is wrong but he can somebody else do so and he had as well to do so as any body else. That is always the answer you get. They have a kind of elastic consciousness thatexpand[sic] to fit any case"