DaveBrt
1st Lieutenant
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2010
- Location
- Charlotte, NC
Richmond Examiner, October 1, 1861
*****
We believe that the history of the progress of disease in our camps is nearly the same with all the regiments, and is simply this: the men are taken down with the measles, or some other of the infantile diseases; they are confined to the tent or hospital for a couple of weeks, rarely more; they feel well, and enter upon the performance of their camp duties; they soon relapse, and the relapse assumes the form of typhoid fever or pneumonia; diarrhea dysentery, or some other debilitating ailment; then comes along and tedious illness, not often very severe, but when severe, either ending in death or leaving the patient an emaciated skeleton, without physical strength, prostrated in mind, body and spirits.
In nine cases our of ten the disease commences with measles; then comes the relapse, with its protracted fevers, and sometimes its fatal termination. The measles is the beginning of the evil; and it is a noteworthy fact that the regiments recruited from our cities escape sickness altogether, and enjoy remarkably fine health, while those recruited from the rural districts at once are taken down with the measles, and then are decimated by all the diseases which follow the relapse succeeding that pestilential contagion.
It is obvious enough why the rural regiments are thus scourged by this infection. It is the practice of the country people to run away from diseases of this sort, and to isolate their children most sedulously from all possibility of contact with them. Towns-people, on the contrary, contract them in infancy, when they are least hurtful, and encounter them in their mildest form. The country regiments contract them at a crisis when their health is most severely tested by unaccustomed exposure, and at an age when they most severely shake the constitution.
The measles, too, is a very treacherous disease, lasting several weeks longer than it seems to the patient to do. If the authority of Dr. Cartwright is to be believed, it remains in the system four or six weeks after the patient seems to be well, and in fact, feels entirely recovered; during which season the least contraction of cold, or excess in diet, or undue exposure, is liable to bring on a relapse, which assumes the form of typhoid fever or pneumonia, or some other debilitating or exhausting disease.
Such is the explanation of the extraordinary prevalence of sickness in our camps as given by some very eminent physicians.
*****
We believe that the history of the progress of disease in our camps is nearly the same with all the regiments, and is simply this: the men are taken down with the measles, or some other of the infantile diseases; they are confined to the tent or hospital for a couple of weeks, rarely more; they feel well, and enter upon the performance of their camp duties; they soon relapse, and the relapse assumes the form of typhoid fever or pneumonia; diarrhea dysentery, or some other debilitating ailment; then comes along and tedious illness, not often very severe, but when severe, either ending in death or leaving the patient an emaciated skeleton, without physical strength, prostrated in mind, body and spirits.
In nine cases our of ten the disease commences with measles; then comes the relapse, with its protracted fevers, and sometimes its fatal termination. The measles is the beginning of the evil; and it is a noteworthy fact that the regiments recruited from our cities escape sickness altogether, and enjoy remarkably fine health, while those recruited from the rural districts at once are taken down with the measles, and then are decimated by all the diseases which follow the relapse succeeding that pestilential contagion.
It is obvious enough why the rural regiments are thus scourged by this infection. It is the practice of the country people to run away from diseases of this sort, and to isolate their children most sedulously from all possibility of contact with them. Towns-people, on the contrary, contract them in infancy, when they are least hurtful, and encounter them in their mildest form. The country regiments contract them at a crisis when their health is most severely tested by unaccustomed exposure, and at an age when they most severely shake the constitution.
The measles, too, is a very treacherous disease, lasting several weeks longer than it seems to the patient to do. If the authority of Dr. Cartwright is to be believed, it remains in the system four or six weeks after the patient seems to be well, and in fact, feels entirely recovered; during which season the least contraction of cold, or excess in diet, or undue exposure, is liable to bring on a relapse, which assumes the form of typhoid fever or pneumonia, or some other debilitating or exhausting disease.
Such is the explanation of the extraordinary prevalence of sickness in our camps as given by some very eminent physicians.
Bringing the