Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

by Jonathan Kennedy

The Union Army was bigger and better supplied, but it struggled to win battles. The reasons for this include incompetent leadership, brave adversaries and logistical problems. Another important factor was that most of the Northern soldiers had not developed immunity to malaria, whereas most of the Southern soldiers had. According to one estimate, 40 percent of Union soldiers fell ill each year with the disease. The debilitating fevers were massively disruptive to the war effort and, if they didn’t kill sufferers outright, made them susceptible to other infectious diseases such as dysentery and measles. Throughout the Civil War, twice as many Northern troops died from disease as were killed in battle by Confederate guns.