Army of Manifest Destiny: The American Soldier in the Mexican War, 1846-1848

4. "Nearly All Who Take Sick Die"*

CHAPTER 4 "Wtarly JIll Who 70ke $ick Vie"* Sickness began thinning the ranks of the soldiers even before they left their home states and continued as they made their way to Mexico. But after reaching their destination, their health declined precipitously . Diarrhea, malaria, and dysentery were the most pervasive diseases, but other killers such as smallpox, cholera, and yellow fever also appeared in the camps. Even such illnesses as mumps and measles proved fatal to many. Disease, which killed almost eleven thousand American soldiers and led to the discharge from service of several thousand more, was Mexico's greatest ally in this war. In fact, the death rate of the men serving in Mexico was ten times what it was among the general population of the United States at that time. 1 Sickness was so prevalent at times that camps resembled hospitals more than military installations. The disease rate, according to an Illinois soldier, was truly alarming: "Measles, mumps, diarrhea and fever of an intermitting type were all at work upon the troops." Nor was this an isolated complaint. An Alabamian "never saw anything like the extent to which the diarrhee prevails in camp," and an Ohioan, commenting on the debilitated state of comrades from Illinois, noted, "'"fhey are the most sickly, enfeebled set of men I ever saw. They *James L. McCloughlin to James McCloughlin, Sr. "NEARLY ALL WHO TAKE SICK DIE" 53 ought all to be sent home for their health." Another soldier maintained that the military musicians spent so much time playing the funeral march that the mockingbirds in the area added it to their repertoires. 2 Indeed, isolated cases of sickness seemed rare. Instead a disease tended to roar through a camp like a prairie fire. An outbreak of measles among Tennessee volunteers spread so quickly that two-thirds of the regiment was soon laid low. With huge numbers at sick call, ordinary camp routines ground to a halt. "We Dont pretend to Drill now," an Illinois soldier wrote, "for thare ant hardly anough well ones to take Care of the Sick." 3 Losses to sickness approached 60 percent in one of the Tennessee regiments, and illness depleted several other units by as much as 40 percent. In the American army as a whole sickness caused fully seven times as many deaths as did Mexican musket balls. As dreadful as this statistic may be, it is not so very different from those of other wars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Precise figures are not available for American losses to illness in the Revolutionary War, but from the Seven Years' War through the Napoleonic Wars the ratio of deaths by disease to those by hostile causes in the British army was about eight to one. The proportion evened out somewhat during the Civil War, where sickness only claimed two lives for everyone lost to enemy fire. This seemingly rapid improvement in health probably was due less to any dramatic increases in medical knowledge than to the nature of the war itself. The Civil War saw American armies of unprecedented size engage one another in battles of uncommon ferocity in which Union and Confederate troops killed each other so fast that the balance between combat deaths and noncombat deaths began to even out. The 1862 Battle of Antietam, where each side lost as many men in one day as the American army lost during the entire war with Mexico, amply illustrates this theory. Disease-related fatalities again overwhelmingly predominated after the Civil War, and it was not until World War II-and after great medical advances-that the trend reversed itself.4 The high incidence of death by disease during the Mexican War is easily attributable to the state of medical knowledge at the time. The medical profession in general did not yet understand disease transmis- 54 "NEARLY ALL WHO TAKE SICK DIE" sion, or the need for sanitation in dealing with the sick or wounded. But a greater contributor to the ever-lengthening lists of dead was the status of the medical profession in the United States. American medical schools in the early nineteenth century generally required their students to attend two terms of lectures, each covering the same material, and each lasting only three or four months. Students attending schools that offered more than one term per calendar year could satisfy this requirement rather quickly. Others began their studies well after the beginning...