DWAS MCCLELLAN’S TROOPS APPROACHED RICHMOND IN 1862, THOUSANDS were felled by disease in swamps along the sluggish Chickahominy River. Colonel Wesley Brainerd, a Union engineer who helped bridge that river, wrote that many of those toiling there contracted so-called “Chickahominy fever, for which there seemed to be no antidote but quinine in immense quantities. The Army lost far more men by this disease than by the bullets of the enemy.”
Such costly efforts produced the bridge shown here and other spans, which enabled McClellan’s invaders to close in on the Confederate capital. But they themselves were prey to an invisible invader—something noxious that seemed to emanate from the swamp and its foul air, afflicting them with fever and chills. Not until later would scientists determine that this debilitating disease called malaria (meaning “bad air”) was in fact caused by a parasite introduced into the bloodstream by mosquitoes. Malaria infected many troops defending Richmond as well. One Confederate recalled how “the big swamp mosquitoes would stick their long bills through our clothes, to get a last farewell taste of our blood.”
All that was known at the time was that quinine helped those suffering from malaria get back on their feet. Made from cinchona bark harvested in the Andes, shipped to New York, and processed into pills for Union troops, quinine was scarce in the Confederacy, which had to smuggle that drug and other medicines through the Union blockade. Victims who lacked quinine found that malaria could be a deadly enemy. DW
PLAGUES OF WAR For Federals who bridged the Chickahominy River (FIRST IMAGE) and Confederates who opposed them, falling in battle presented just one risk in a war that exposed soldiers to malaria, dysentery, typhoid, and other diseases afflicting men living in unsanitary camps and unprotected from mosquitoes, flies, and other pests. Quinine, held in tins like the one at center (SECOND IMAGE), was one of the few effective drugs available to troops during the conflict.
