Disease in the Civil War: Natural Biological Warfare in 1861-1865, and: Medical-Military Portraits of Union and Confederate Generals (review)

282CIVIL WAR HISTORY here this reviewer cannot quite accept Coddington's insistence that, in terms of arms and manpower, the Confederates about equalled the Federals). If there is a weakness in this fine study it is in the minimizing of the first day's battle at Gettysburg in its import and significance on the outcome of the whole battle and campaign, and not enough proportionate space is devoted to this ferocious clash of arms for some nine hours on July 1st, 1863. But the appendices, maps, and index are adequate, and the style of writing, though muscular rather than literary, is effective . In short, Coddington has given the serious scholar of the American Civil War an enormously-detailed, thorough, incisive study which finally might be expected to occupy the highest niche in the mammoth literature on Gettysburg for some time to come. Warren W. Hassler, Jr. Pennsylvania State University Disease in the Civil War: Natural Biological Warfare in 1861-1865. By Paul E. Steiner. (Springfield, 111.: Charles C. Thomas, 1968. Pp. xv, 243. $10.50.) Medical-Military Portraits of Union and Confederate Generals. By Paul E. Steiner. (Philadelphia: Whitmore Publishing Co., 1968. Pp. vu, 342. $6.00.) "To the degree that wars are won or lost because of casualties the ability to make war and the will to continue ignoring the role played by disease results in a distorted view of history," says Dr. Paul E. Steiner early in his Disease in the Civil War. The late Douglas Southall Freeman told a Round Table audience almost two decades ago that historians could do Civil War history a great service by researching the effect weather had on battles and the men concerned with them. He thought a careful and accurate record of what kind of weather was experienced during the course of different battles would reveal much. If Dr. Freeman were alive today it is certain he would applaud the two volumes which Dr. Steiner has produced as being a most worthy venture in an equally neglected area of Civü War studies that has long needed detailed attention. Students of the Civil War have accepted or grown accustomed to stories of the endurance of Stonewall Jackson's "foot cavalry" or of the rugged experiences of troops on both sides who slogged through four years of campaigning and were able to live to tell of it as "hardened veterans." The readiness to amputate arms and legs, the huge numbers of wounded, and the patient suffering endured by Union and Confederate soldiers has also been amply chronicled in a seemingly endless BOOK REVIEWS283 bibliography of accounts. References have been made to sickness in stories of the war but they have been only in passing and almost apologetic in their brevity or lack of detail. Dr. Steiner takes a hard look at just how formidable an ally ( or foe ) disease could be in what he calls the "natural biological warfare" of the Civil War years. Historians and biographers might want to reassess their earlier estimates of the behavior of troops and some leaders as history records their actions in the light of his findings. From the very beginning, and throughout the four years of the war, diagnosis was off the mark more often than centered on it. It is an accepted fact that more men died of disease in the years of the Civil War than were killed in battles. "The chief reliance for protection was on field sanitation and hygiene," Dr. Steiner writes. This proved "ineffective because they were based on physical and chemical concepts of cleanliness rather than on microbiological ones." The statistics on medical casualties for both sides in the Civil War are grim. From May 1, 1861, to June 30, 1866, Federal forces alone suffered 6,454,834 medical casualties (which includes multiple enlistments). The two top diseases in the war, the author states, were acute and chronic diarrhea and dysentery, with 1,739,135 cases of which 44,558 proved fatal. Typhoid knocked out 34,833 men and pneumonia dispatched 19,971. "Disease was a tremendous force in some military problems and their outcome," Dr. Steiner points out. "It eroded troops from the day of enlistment to discharge, interfering...