Civil War Camps and Soldier Health: Sanitation and Military Effectiveness in the Union Army
English | 2026 | ISBN: 1606355058 | 432 pages | True EPUB | 6.41 MB
The Civil War was a watershed in public awareness of the many challenges to soldier health posed by camp life. Sanitarians among civilians and regular army officers attempted to meet those challenges by addressing a range of topics associated with preventive health care in the volunteer army. The U.S. Sanitary Commission, a non-governmental agency sanctioned by the Federal government, created a massive campaign to study conditions in semi-permanent camps and advise unit commanders how to avoid unnecessary illness and curb soldier deaths by disease. Commission inspectors, mostly civilian physicians, examined camps from 1861 to early 1864 and filed more than 1400 reports of their findings.