The records state that eight thousand died from diarrhoea and scurvy, and
that three thousand more died from dysentery and unknown causes. Two
hundred and fifteen thousand cases of diarrhoea were treated in the United
States army in 1862, and but one thousand one hundred died; and of
thirty-seven thousand cases of dysentery, but three hundred and
forty-seven died; and but one death from scurvy per thirty-five thousand
of mean strength. In 1863, according to the official records by Surgeon
Woodward, five hundred thousand cases of diarrhoea and dysentery were
treated, and but two per cent. died. According to the same authority there
were but eight thousand six hundred cases of scurvy during the first two
years of the war, and but one per cent. of these died. Fever was almost
unknown, although the foul atmospheres and malarial miasms are generally
so eager in their attacks, and so rapid in their effects; the autopsies of
the dead men revealed to the astonished pathologist the utter absence of
all the usual lesions of these diseases.
Boudin, of the French army, in 1843, in his "Essai de Geographie
Medicale," observes that phthisis and typhoid fever are very rare in the
marshy districts where intermittent fevers of a certain gravity prevail.
It does not appear that either of these diseases declared itself to any
perceptible degree.
The effect of starvation was so strong that miasmatic disease could not
gain a lodgment in the system, although every other condition was
favorable to its production. Scurvy seems to be prominent in the alleged
diseases. The combined influence of all the vicious conditions could
readily have produced this form of malady in its worst shape; but it is
one of those diseases which are clearly within the control of man, and for
the existence of which, in this case, there is no excuse whatever. They
required the treatment, practised with success in India, for those fluxes
which are marked by a scorbutic state of the system--potatoes and lime
juice.
The neighboring plantations produced the potatoes in great quantities. In
the everglades of Florida the lime tree, which furnishes a positive
antidote, grows in wild luxuriance; and the woods everywhere, the corn and
potatoes of their fields, furnish vinegar by distillation. If the
plantations failed in their supplies of vegetables, the forests furnished,
with trifling labor, an excellent substitute.
Vinegar, in the early history of war, was the chief and the sure reliance
against the attacks of scurvy and malaria. To this drink chiefly, Marshal
Saxe ascribes the amazing success of the Roman campaigns in the varied
climates of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Scientific men, from Dioscorides to
Orfila, have extolled its virtues in this respect. It is idle to say that
they did not know how to make it, for the merest tyro in chemistry
understands the method of fermentation and distillation.