New Research Proves Glowing Civil War Wounds Caused by Bacteria

[civilwartalk]

Thursday, June 6, 2001

By Michael Kendra

A century-old mystery has been solved by a group of award-winning High School students. For years historians have wondered why some Civil War soldiers' wounds were reported to have glowed in the dark.

In a report, which won first prize in team competition at the 2001 Intel International Science and Engineering Science Fair, the students reported that a tiny worm called a nematode harbors a bacterium, Photorhabdus luminescens. These bacteria produce a toxin that kills insects and emits a luminescence, as well as antibiotics that prevent other harmful bacteria from thriving.

The two students, Bill Martin and Jonathan Curtis of Bowie High School in Bowie, Maryland, suggest that the body temperatures of wounded Civil War soldiers, lying on the ground and suffering from hypothermia, were probably cool enough to allow nematodes to survive. Normally, the body temperature of humans is too warm for the worms to survive. Once in humans, the worms produced the ``antibiotic'' that gave the wounds the legendary luminescence and allowed them to heal.

The students looked at a type of staphylococcus bacterium taken from another student's hand, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Bacillus thuringiensis, a surrogate for gangrene. According to the findings, the substance produced by the nematode inhibited all three infection-causing bacteria.