(Photo)
cartoon of a Washington citizen with the shakes
During the Civil War people believed
malaria was
caused by poisonous vapors emanating
from ponds and
swamps. While
many of the men noted in their diaries
the swarms
of mosquitoes that attacked during
warmer months,
and the ensuing
sickness that enveloped the camp, they
never put
the two together.
Surgeons from both sides of the Civil
War
called malaria "ague","shakes",
or
"intermittent fever", the illness
accounted
for 20 percent of all sickness during
the war. A
typical
case of malaria
started with shivers down the spine,
then
fluctuating fevers for days. According
to the
clinical records, doctors used
a variety of treatments for malaria,
but whiskey
and quinine were the standard treatment.
Some Yankee
patients were
given so much quinine that their teeth
became loose
and they were not able to eat. When
drugs became
scarce in the
South, doctors substituted tonics made
from whiskey
mixed with barks of dogwood, tulip and
willow
trees.