Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Union

  • The decisive influence of malaria on the outcome of Grant’s Vicksburg campaign of 1863

    Lloyd KleinEric WittenbergCalifornia, San Francisco, United States The vital importance of controlling the Mississippi River was apparent to Union strategists from the beginning of the Civil War. The river served as a major supply route, facilitated the transportation of men and military supplies, and abetted communication. Union control of the river would deprive the Confederacy…

  • Andersonville, Georgia and Elmira, New York: When Hell was on Earth

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”— Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy When the American Civil War (1861–1865) began neither the Union nor the Confederacy gave much thought to housing prisoners-of-war (POWs). Eventually, the two opposing sides had a total of about 120 POW camps.1 The two armies had captured a total of…

  • Abraham Lincoln’s smallpox

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden A brutal, bloody civil war had been tearing the United States of America apart for two years when President Abraham Lincoln arrived in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on November 19, 1863. Four months before his visit, Gettysburg had been the site of a major battle between the secessionist Confederacy of the southern, slave-holding states…