Hello friends, welcome to episode 10 of Secrets of the Civil War.

In early April of 1862, Brigadier General Eulissi's S. Grant led 63,000 Union troops

to Southwest Tennessee where they fought 40,000 Confederate soldiers at the Battle of

Shiloh. When the fighting ended nearly 20,000 men lay dead or wounded strewn about the

Tennessee landscape. Battlefield medics couldn't keep up and thousands of injured men were

forced to wait out the night, laying in the rainy muddy fields. As the legend is told

when the sun set and the temperatures dipped to near freezing, their wounds begin to glow

a bluish-green. I'm Sharon McMahon and here's where it gets interesting. Listen, I'm going to

give you a little content warning right at the top if you have a squeamish stomach before

you're warned because we are going to be talking about things like civil war medicine. And the

wounds are not always pleasant to think about, but I do think you will find this episode fascinating

because civil war medicine has actually had a significant impact on medicine in the United States

today. Okay, if you're with me, onward. It took two days for the battlefield doctors and nurses

to attend to all of the wounded men at Shiloh. Some didn't make it, but some, those soldiers

who reported that their wounds had glowed an eerie blue were said to have made unexpected,

quick, recoveries. For almost 140 years, no one could explain why. In 2001, two high school

boys, Bill Martin and John Curtis visited the Shiloh Civil War battlefield and heard the famous

legend of Angels Glow. Bill was a civil war buff and wanted to try to explain the phenomenon for

their science fair project. Bill's mother, Phyllis, was a microbiologist for the USDA Agricultural

Research Service. She studied bioluminescent bacteria in soils. It was an aha moment when her

son told her about the Angel Glow story. She zeroed in on a specific bacteria called

photoreptus luminescence that emitted a blue glow. At the time, Phyllis recalled that the boys had

...