Soap anyone?

[Kentucky Derby Cavalier.]

With the staggering amount of death due to disease, was there any type of sanitary protocol put in place by either army? Was soap ever used to wash hands? What about water purification?

Since we're currently going through a pandemic, I couldn't help but think about this.

Thoughts? Discuss.

 

[dgfred]

I always think about how dirty and smelly everyone must have been. Also, bugs and skeeters. Goodness.

 

[Gary Morgan]

I remember my old Irish Auntie (born in 1872) used to make her own soap out of saved up meat fat and lye! It stank something awful when she made it.

If I remember, hospitals originally used some sort of carbolic spray to disinfect with. Rubber gloves were supposedly invented by a doctor whose favorite nurse was going to quit because of the job that stuff was doing on her skin.

 

[Kentucky Derby Cavalier.]

I always think about how dirty and smelly everyone must have been. Also, bugs and skeeters. Goodness.

They must have smelt horrible.

 

[Kentucky Derby Cavalier.]

I remember my old Irish Auntie (born in 1872) used to make her own soap out of saved up meat fat and lye! It stank something awful when she made it.

If I remember, hospitals originally used some sort of carbolic spray to disinfect with. Rubber gloves were supposedly invented by a doctor whose favorite nurse was going to quit because of the job that stuff was doing on her skin.

Interesting.

 

[Scott1967]

In Truth when you spend so much time in the field your body becomes waterproof to a certain extent you hair becomes oily and rain just tends to bounce off you , You tend not to notice the smell after 3-4 weeks.

The biggest killer was Dysentery or lack of clean drinking water the plague of armies of the past followed by colds and flu and malaria.

Epidemics were rife with city boys faring slightly better than their country counterparts.

Not sure on the numbers but well over 400k died of disease maybe more.

Officers fared better as normally they never shared cramped conditions and they could afford to buy better grooming equipment many also did not indulge in the rations instead having men forage local food to put on the officers table.

The perks of being an officer

 

[Western Reserve Volunteer]

Germ theory was not yet a thing, but people still washed. Of course, combat doesn't always allow for "normal cleanliness", whatever period you're talking about.

Dysentery was a big cause of death... I suspect the reason was that if you get hot enough in the summer campaign season, you'll drink just about any old water. So you wound getting screwed coming or going, trying to avoid heat stroke and winding up with dysentery.

 

[Kentucky Derby Cavalier.]

Germ theory was not yet a thing, but people still washed. Of course, combat doesn't always allow for "normal cleanliness", whatever period you're talking about.

Dysentery was a big cause of death... I suspect the reason was that if you get hot enough in the summer campaign season, you'll drink just about any old water. So you wound getting screwed coming or going, trying to avoid heat stroke and winding up with dysentery.

I imagine all the extra stress of being a soldier probably didn't help someones immune system either.

 

[damYankee]

This is a timely subject

 

[Ole Miss]

Stomach disorders and digestive problems were the real killers. Becoming dehydrated in the hot and humid South took its toll on all soldiers, North and South. These men had grown up drinking unpure water and must have had built up incredible tolerances but drinking water that came down stream from the sinks was just too much! I have read several letters and unit histories that cover the first few weeks and months of camp live with outbreaks of measles, small pox, malari as well as any other scourge that was making its rounds. I believe the city boys had more tolerance than the country boys.
Regards
David

 

[damYankee]

Stomach disorders and digestive problems were the real killers. Becoming dehydrated in the hot and humid South took its toll on all soldiers, North and South. These men had grown up drinking unpure water and must have had built up incredible tolerances but drinking water that came down stream from the sinks was just too much! I have read several letters and unit histories that cover the first few weeks and months of camp live with outbreaks of measles, small pox, malari as well as any other scourge that was making its rounds. I believe the city boys had more tolerance than the country boys.
Regards
David

I'm not so sure it worked that way, most of the men who enlisted had never traveled more than a hundred miles from their home, of think that was true on both sides, of course that's a generalization, it is true that water borne dieseses where common through out the nation, large cities were worse. But the majority of Yanks didn`t come from large cities, but from farms in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Kansas, Delaware, New Hampshire, etc.
Most of New York at the time was rural, not big cities, as an example, Harlerm was mostly farms and dairy., as was most of Long Island at the time.
But malaria was more common in the South, and being brought together in large groups, in camps with little sanitation has always been a problem in the military.

 

[Ole Miss]

@damYankee I believe we may be agreeing more than differeing
I was pointing out that the big city boys---New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston to mention a few---were exposed to several diseases before the country boys and so the rural soldiers were hit the hardest in camps. I have read several articles and a few books dealing with health concerns about soldiers and will share an article below that states my view better than I can.
Regards
David

"Socioeconomic background affected soldier's chances of survival during the Civil War in the areas of previous residency, occupation and skin color for blacks. The mortality of a white Northern solider was better if he was not a farmer and lived in the city because he was probably exposed to other infections and his body had built immunity to the disease. The mortality from disease for slaves formerly engaged in other nonfarm occupations such as house servants was as low as the death rate for those in elite occupations, but their advantages over field hands resulted exclusively from their lower probability of contracting diseases."

The Impact of Disease on the Civil Ware by Intisar K. Hamidullah
https://teachers.yale.edu/curriculum/viewer/initiative_10.06.02_u

 

[luinrina]

I don't think either side had vast opportunities for hygiene during active campaigns. I'm currently reading Rhea's books on the Overland Campaign, and there's a quote from a soldier: "We had not had our clothes off in 24 days. Not a man thought of washing his face, much less of taking a bath." Granted, the Overland Campaign was a drastic change for the Army of the Potomac's style of campaigning, but IMO it still speaks volumes about how the soldiers thought of hygiene during a campaign.

 

[damYankee]

@damYankee I believe we may be agreeing more than differeing
I was pointing out that the big city boys---New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston to mention a few---were exposed to several diseases before the country boys and so the rural soldiers were hit the hardest in camps. I have read several articles and a few books dealing with health concerns about soldiers and will share an article below that states my view better than I can.
Regards
David

"Socioeconomic background affected soldier's chances of survival during the Civil War in the areas of previous residency, occupation and skin color for blacks. The mortality of a white Northern solider was better if he was not a farmer and lived in the city because he was probably exposed to other infections and his body had built immunity to the disease. The mortality from disease for slaves formerly engaged in other nonfarm occupations such as house servants was as low as the death rate for those in elite occupations, but their advantages over field hands resulted exclusively from their lower probability of contracting diseases."

The Impact of Disease on the Civil Ware by Intisar K. Hamidullah
https://teachers.yale.edu/curriculum/viewer/initiative_10.06.02_u

It is an intriguing subject, our perception of big city doesn't line up with big city of the era. , No indoor plumbing for the masses, only a few very rich. out houses behind all the apartments and hotel buildings, usually within close proximity to the shallow wells that provided drinking water.
Horse stables abounded, with everything delivered by horse drawn wagons, all taxis powered by horses on cobble stone streets, saturated with horse urine and road apples. During the sweltering hot summer days, with no such thing as A/C or electric fans. The air became choking. So when we look back on medicine of the day and we hear of doctors diagnosing patients with exposure to "bad air" we should not be too harsh, the air truly was bad.
I had the great luck of knowing my g. grandfather who passed in 1969 when I was 18. He was born in Iowa in 1870, the son of a veteran of the 4th Iowa Cav. As a young boy his father had taken him to Chicago.
He was a great story teller and told me about his travels from Iowa when his father was entered an "old soldiers home" he went to San Francisco then to Columbia, South America, to New York City. All before 1899.
He said the "good old days" weren't all that great! What a life he lived!