While in Camp Curtin the men suffered, like most other newly organized regiments, from rubeola, in common with the whole camp. Variola was also present, but by thorough and careful vaccination of the men as fast as recruited its spread was prevented, only two cases of varioloid occurring in the regiment. Typhoid fever, incident to the season in that region, diarrhoea and dysentery, the result of sudden change of diet, and other habits of life, as well as the crowded state of the camp, involving imperfect police arrangements, bad sinks, etc., together with the usual excesses of raw recruits, contributed to keep the sick list of the regiment, at that time numbering about 800 men, up to the average of fifty cases in hospital and quarters, or a little over 6 per cent.
During the prevalence of rubeola the regiment was ordered to Washington, D. C., about the middle of December, and though the intention of the medical officer was to have left all cases of measles behind, what with the anxiety of the convalescents to go along, and new cases occurring on the way, it was found when reaching Washington, that we had no less than fifteen cases of rubeola in various stages of progress, and in three days nearly double that number.
The men were very much exposed to the effects of cold during the trip, being two days and nights in open cars. The site selected for a camp—near Bladensburg toll-gate—was a bad one, low and wet. The result was many cases of pneumonia as a complication or sequella of rubeola, with innumerable catarrhs of all degrees of severity. Four cases of pneumonia resulted fatally the second week. Many more were sent to the general hospital as soon as admittance could be obtained for them. At first admittance was refused for fear of infecting the hospitals. Stimulants were freely used with benefit in simple rubeola as well as that complicated with pneumonia.
A change of camp to better ground about the 1st of January, 1862, together with a full supply of medical and hospital stores, effected a gradual improvement, but the appearance of mumps among the men before the measles had entirely disappeared kept the sick list large all winter, sometimes as great a proportion as 10 per cent. of the whole command. The men were quartered in Sibley tents, not more than 10 or 12 in a tent, inspected daily, and by great care in cleanliness and ventilation, typhus fever was avoided, and but few cases of typhoid appeared.
In February we were moved to near Fort Lyon, below Alexandria, and placed in General Jameson's brigade, from which time until nearly the last of August, the military history is nearly identical with that of the other regiments of the same brigade and its medical history similar. They were the 63d and 105th Pennsylvania and the 87th New York Volunteers.
On the 17th of March we were shipped on board transports at Alexandria for Fortress Monroe, where we were landed at dark during a cold rain storm, to which the men were exposed during the night, in and by the roadside, without any protection whatever. The next day and night they were quartered in open horse sheds. Then for two weeks they were camped in open fields near Hampton, in shelter-tents, in the use of which the men were entirely unskilled, a matter of more moment than would at first appear. The result of the unusual exposure was the appearance of dysentery to considerable extent among the men, even at that early season.
On the 4th and 5th of April we were marched from Hampton to within three miles of Yorktown and confined for one week within short range of the rebel guns. A heavy rain flooded the tents for four days, during two of which neither officers nor men had anything to eat. The brigade was then moved back half a mile into the woods, to a spot in the immediate vicinity of several large marshes; in fact, the camp itself was little better than a swamp. For three weeks the men walked in mud, slept in mud, and drank water from holes scooped out in the mud. The combined remonstrance of the medical officers of the brigade, that a "month's continuance in that place would deprive the Government of the services of one-half the men and officers," was met by the silencing reply: "It is a military necessity."
The subsequent amount of sickness shows that our fears were well founded. The malaria imbibed in the marshes and swamps at Yorktown, together with the excessive amount of labor performed there, on picket and in the trenches, debilitated our men for months, putting dozens of them in their graves and rendered hundreds of them unfit for service for months, many of them for life.
We had one man killed by a shell and five wounded while before Yorktown, in the skirmish of the "peach orchard," and two by accident, one shot through the penis and scrotum, above the testicle, and behind the cord and thigh, by a small sized rifle bullet, recovered rapidly by simple dressing. One shot through the leg died afterwards in general hospital. Remainder slight wounds.
On the 4th of May we again marched in pursuit of the enemy, leaving forty-three sick in hospital and sending four back next day, mostly cases of remittent fever, some diarrhoea and dysentery.