Hey everyone, welcome to episode number 61 of our Civil War podcast.

My name is Rich.

When I'm Tracy, hello y'all, thanks for tuning in to the podcast.

William Hammond, named by President Lincoln, a surgeon general of the Army in 1862, later

on in his life, said that the Civil War was fought during what he described as, quote,

the end of the medical Middle Ages.

End quote.

That's because when the war was fought, an understanding of germ theory was still a decade away, and

so thousands of soldiers died not from their wounds, but from infections or gangrene

that developed later.

And that wasn't the worst of it.

The greatest menace to Civil War soldiers wasn't enemy fire, or even infection of their

wounds.

No, the biggest threat to Civil War soldiers was preventable diseases.

Sadly, the vast majority of Union and Confederate field fatalities were caused by these diseases

that swept through camps and hospitals, and estimated three out of five northern dead

and two out of three deaths among southern soldiers were caused by preventable diseases,

such as dysentery, typhoid fever, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and even what we think of as

childhood ailments like measles and hooping cough.

Writing home, soldiers often remarked that they didn't fear the big battles as much as

being taken to a hospital where they would be exposed to killers they couldn't see

and didn't understand.

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