Diseases

1837-38 was a huge smallpox epidemic. It started on a large boat and when it went into port the small towns quickly caught the deadly disease.
Out of every 1,000 men, 995 died of Typhoid fever. If you caught a small cold during the Civil war you had very high chances of it turning into pneumonia. Dysentery killed the most men, typhoid was second, and pneumonia was the third.



























1/2 of deaths from disease during the Civil war, was from solders that had diarrhea, and dysentery. In 1862 around 200,000 solders were found to be physically unfit, or had fallen ill.











3/5 Union solders died of disease, and 2/3 Confederates. Smallpox, along with Measles, Mumps, Typhoid, and Pneumonia were biggest, deadliest disease that killed solders.












Disease could easily start up, and when they did large numbers of solders would become ill. Medical camps had limited amounts of water, and poor education so they rarely sterilized their hands and equipment. In camps with a large population of young solders the disease would be easily caught by the solders because they'd never before been exposed to them.











Artist Statement-
Megan Beal

The black lumps that are smallpox bumps or tombstones are all over the quilt piece showing that so many solders died because of disease. Then randomly there are red bullet holes, to show that more people died of disease then of being shot. The medical sign in the middle represents that because of the wide spread diseases during the civil war our doctors are more educated and learn no longer from a book but actually go to school. The sign is more modern so it’s showing that doctor education evolved.

Thanks-
Eva D. & Megan B.
xoxo