“Eat your vegetables.”
Parents use the phrase today in a desperate effort to get their children to eat something besides ice cream or french fries. During the Civil War, though, such a request could literally be lifesaving.
Disease was responsible for more than two-thirds of all Civil War deaths. Diarrhea and dysentery were the most common reported diseases during the conflict, with more than 1.6 million cases in the Union Army alone. All told, that led to roughly 50,000 deaths on both sides.
WHY DID CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS HAVE SO MUCH DIARRHEA?
Chronic diarrhea was often a sign of malnutrition or critical vitamin deficiencies. In having to deal with it, Civil War doctors and surgeons typically associated diarrhea with scurvy — a disease caused by vitamin C deficiency but one that also was widely acknowledged to be treatable with fresh produce. But why was this such a common problem during the war?
