Disease and the Army

Today Glenn Reynolds links and comments on an interesting article about Afhgan army recruits:

GOOD NEWS / BAD NEWS FOR THE AFGHAN ARMY:

The recruiting for the new Afghan army is going well, except for the fact that so many of the eager recruits have to be rejected for health reasons. Apparently no one realized how poor the health of the average Afghan is. Most recruits, and most young Afghans, are

- Slightly malnourished, often suffering from minor vitamin deficiencies

- Come from rural areas where they were not exposed to many communicable diseases, and have not had any immunizations.

- Have never had a physical, dental, or eye exam.

In other words, it's like the U.S. Army in 1898.

Actually, not to nitpick, but its a lot like the U.S. Army in 1861. During the Civil War, many recruits came from rural areas and were mixed up in divisions filled with other urban recruited regiments. Disease, not the bullet or cannon, was the number one killer in the Civil War. Both the Grey and Blue were so desperate for men, they often recruited those who were already in a "less-than-adequate" state, health-wise. Union recruits from the rurual, rough-and-tough West often frowned upon their urban bretheran that shed their bankers' suits for their Army blues. Yet, it was the urban soldiers who were immune to many of the diseases to which many of these rural roughnecks had never been exposed and were far less likely to contract many of the killer diseases that spread through the ranks.

The Civil War was fought at the end of the "Medical Middle Ages," and the main diseases contracted were dysentary, diarreha, typhoid fever, malaria, pneumonia and tuberculosis. In both the Union and Confederate armies, doctors were few and severly undertrained.

My family has the Civil War discharge papers for my great grandfather and a few years ago, my uncle came up with the idea to try and pull his military records from the National Archives in Washington D.C. Legend in the family understood that my great grandfather fought in a regiment from Minnesota that was part of the Mississipi campaign that attacked Vicksburg. There were over 10,000 Union causualties in that battle.

As we plowed through his records, we found that at somepoint in the campaign, my great grandfather contracted pneumonia and was rerouted from Vicksburg to an infirmary regiment in Washington D.C. Further records showed that he pulled a pension from the U.S. government for the rest of his life due to permanent respitory damage. He was just one of large-majority of Civil War soldiers that ended up with some kind of life-threatening bug. However, permanent damage not-withstanding, it looks as if he was one of the lucky ones.

CORRECTION: My counting and classification skills were severely negligent--in this post it wasn't my great grandfather, but my great-great grandfather who was the Civil War veteran. Also, in the comments, instead of my great uncle, it would be my great-great-great uncle.