| White troops. | Coloured troops. | |
|---|---|---|
| 1861–2 | 20·75 | |
| 1862–3 | 18·24 | |
| 1863–4 | 8·52 | 28·50 |
| 1864–5 | 11·45 | 19·31 |
| 1865–6 | 8·98 | 11·60 |
| Average | 13·58 | 19·8 |
As in the case of typhoid fever, so also in the case of other diseases, the coloured troops suffered the heaviest losses, probably because the food and shelter they received were not so good, and perhaps also because they had less understanding of the sanitary measures that were ordered. Among the Confederate prisoners that were brought north, about 40,875 in number, 18·4 out of every 1,000 succumbed to typhoid fever.[[214]]
Regarding the appearance of typhus fever in the American Civil War, views diverge. Since only a relatively small number of cases of that disease are recorded, it is probable that those cases were wrongly diagnosed, since typhus fever is so highly contagious. In the health-reports of the Northern States, in which the word typhus, as in England and France, means typhus fever, we find the following figures relating to the disease:
| No. that contracted it. | No. that succumbed to it. | |
|---|---|---|
| White troops | 2,501 | 850 |
| Coloured troops | 123 | 108 |
But there are very few case-histories and absolutely no post-mortem reports available from which one can draw a positive conclusion. Laveran doubts the occurrence of typhus fever.[[215]] According to Niedner, on the other hand, typhus fever prevailed among the Northern prisoners in the terribly neglected prisons of Salisbury, North Carolina, and probably, too, in other places.[[216]] It is to be surmised that the increased number of typhus fever patients in New York and Philadelphia, &c., which Hirsch adduces in accordance with the statements of da Costa and Corse, was connected with the epidemic among the prisoners.[[217]] According to Corse, the number of deaths due to typhus fever in Philadelphia was 37 in the year 1862, 131 in 1863, and 335 in 1864.
Unusually prevalent were diarrhoea and dysentery, so that, notwithstanding their relatively mild character, they caused a large number of deaths. The cases of cholera reported were not Asiatic cholera, but a local form of the disease. In the Northern army the following figures indicate the number of deaths due to acute and chronic dysentery and diarrhoea:
| White Troops. | Coloured Troops. | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dysentery. | Diarrhoea. | Dysentery. | Diarrhoea. | |||||
| Acute. | Chronic. | Acute. | Chronic. | Acute. | Chronic. | Acute. | Chronic. | |
| June 1861 | 3 | 1 | ||||||
| 1861–2 | 338 | 136 | 230 | 501 | ||||
| 1862–3 | 967 | 1,090 | 941 | 7,556 | ||||
| 1863–4 | 1,242 | 931 | 620 | 7,868 | 496 | 220 | 503 | 784 |
| 1864–5 | 1,248 | 919 | 973 | 10,600 | 584 | 255 | 608 | 1,788 |
| 1865–6 | 286 | 152 | 159 | 1,033 | 412 | 151 | 257 | 706 |
| 1861–6 | 4,084 | 3,229 | 2,923 | 27,558 | 1,492 | 626 | 1,368 | 3,278 |
Out of every 1,000 men there succumbed to dysentery and diarrhoea together:[[218]]
| White troops. | Coloured troops. | |
|---|---|---|
| 1861–2 | 4·17 | |
| 1862–3 | 15·99 | |
| 1863–4 | 15·78 | 43·54 |
| 1864–5 | 21·29 | 36·29 |
| 1865–6 | 16·00 | 26·97 |
Small-pox raged very extensively during the American Civil War; the coloured troops manifested much more susceptibility to it than the white. The dissemination of the disease was helped along by the fact that vaccination, which had been neglected on account of the hasty mobilization, could not be attended to as rapidly as was desirable.