Many wartime doctors believed pneumonia
was an
inflammation and that the patient needed
to be bled,
or "cupped." So many
patients died after being bled,
however, that
doctors stopped that treatment. Instead,
many
prescribed treatments of
liquor, opium, and quinine. Some
Confederate
patients were given herbal preparations
when quinine
was not available; on
others, mustard plasters were applied.
Soldiers fighting the Civil War had less
to
fear from bullets than from disease.
Actual time
spent in battle
was sporadic and brief, but soldiers
faced death
from disease daily. Pneumonia often
afflicted
soldiers in the elevated
and more northern areas where Civil War
armies
fought and camped during the winter
months.
Confederate troops overworked,
underfed, ill-housed, and exposed to
the elements
often suffered most from the disease.
Sick or
wounded soldiers, whose
immune systems were already impaired,
were
particularly susceptible to pneumonia,
and many
Southerners died from the
disease in frigid Union prisons. One
study showed
that over a 19 month period from 1862 to
1863, more
than 17 percent of
the Confederate army fell victim to
pneumonia; one
out of about every six patients died.