A Soldier's Worst Enemies in the War of 1812

This article of mine will appear in the up-coming issue of historiCity.  This issue will focus
on the year 1813. 

    Dying on a battlefield is not a soldier’s greatest worry during the War of 1812. A soldier
is just as likely to die from infection after receiving medical treatment and much more likely to succumb to disease.

     Casualty reports prepared immediately after War of 1812 battles typically show two soldiers wounded for every one who dies. But does this tell the whole story? What happens to the wounded after the count is taken?

     In the British army each regiment includes at least one surgeon. The surgeon is responsible for treating the wounded. Treatment usually involves surgery which is performed quickly, in unsanitary barns and barracks, using unsterile instruments. Knowledge of germs and bacteria
is eighty years away. Limb amputations are the most common surgeries. The limb is sawn off and a leftover flap of skin is sewn over the bloody stump. This surgery takes ten excruciating minutes. The use of anaesthetics is more than thirty years away. Officers may find some relief with rum or whiskey, but the ordinary soldier is encouraged to "bite the bullet" to keep from biting through his tongue should the pain become too great. Amputation increases a soldier’s chances of escaping gangrene. A soldier with a musket ball in a limb has an eighty per cent chance of surviving if the wound is cleaned and the limb amputated quickly. Those with deep abdomen, chest or head wounds have no hope. Bayonet wounds, deep and triangular in shape, are extremely difficult to treat. Often patients recuperate in open tents with little or no protection from flies. Antibiotics are unknown.

     Following the Battle of Stoney Creek, a local citizen is recruited to assist with surgery.
In 1813 Dr. William Case owns a farm, near what today would be the corner of King and Lottridge Streets in Hamilton. Although trained as a physician in the United States, since coming to Upper Canada with his family he farms land near "the delta", offering medical treatment to his neighbours in exchange for produce or services. Overwhelmed with wounded, army surgeons send both British and American casualties to Case. His home remains a hospital until 1815.

     There are no official reports about what happens to the wounded, but there are estimates that during the war more than twenty per cent, perhaps as much as half of all the wounded succumb to their injuries and infection.

     And then there is disease. Soldiers move in close quarters. Conditions are harsh; often they are unsanitary. Frequently men lack proper clothing for protection from cold, have inadequate diets, and sleep under the stars because there aren’t enough tents. Rain can soak them. Resistence to contagious diseases is very low. Medical treatment, especially for "fevers" is rudimentary and might include the opening of veins for copious bleeding, and laxatives to correct imbalances in bodily fluids, and large doses of opium and alcohol. The variety of drugs available is limited; they might use natural substances like "Jesuit’s bark" or calomel (a poisonous mercury compound) or arsenic solutions.

     Both sides suffer, but the Americans suffer more. They are the invaders with supply line problems. Their army is less experienced with the problems associated with troop movement. In October of 1812 the American army at Lewiston has many hundreds of soldiers too sick to participate in the Battle of Queenston Heights. American bakers are reported to be collecting water from the Niagara River not far from where the latrines from the American encampment empty into the river. In the winter of 1812 General Smyth winters his army at Buffalo and Black Rock after refusing to involve them in the Queenston invasion. His soldiers are in summer uniforms and sleep on the ground in tents without board floors. Sanitation is poor and they are malnourished. Disease is rampant. Fifteen hundred are ill with dysentery (intestinal inflammation), diarrhea ("the flux"), measles, pneumonia and colds. Typhoid fever, known as "lake fever" frequently finishes them off. Men are dying so fast that the coffin makers and grave diggers can’t keep up. In the summer of 1813 following the victory at Stoney Creek, the British encamp nearer Fort George beside mosquito-infested swamp, and are decimated by malaria, known by its symptoms of ague and fever. Malaria is known to be caught near swamps, but no one knows it is transmitted by mosquitos. The prevailing theory is that it is caused by night air around marshes. In November of 1813 General Wilkinson finally launches his march toward Montreal down the St. Lawrence River from Grenadier Island on the eastern end of Lake Ontario. So many American soldiers are unable to continue that every home and barn in Morrisville, Ogdensburg and Red Mills on the American side of the river is crammed with the sick suffering from influenza, fever and pneumonia. The U.S. Army leaves them without instructions or attendants. Eighty per cent of soldiers are said to be suffering from some ailment. One officer attributes this catastrophe to "poisonous provisions," and says that the invading army resembles a "moving hospital." General Wilkinson himself is incapacitated by dysentery and its opium treatment, sometimes fails to be lucid, and issues orders to his army at Crysler’s Farm from the sickbed on his boat in the St. Lawrence. In December of 1813, following the American victory at Moraviantown, General Harrison winters his army at Detroit. Two thirds of his garrison is ill with cholera and dysentery. Within a few months 600 die, more than are killed in Harrison’s entire 1813 campaign. The survivors can’t keep up with coffin making and resort to mass graves. Even American prisoners-of-war in the British prison ships at Quebec and on Melville Island off Halifax fare better. Only 20% of them are ill, mostly from typhus spread in the overcrowded conditions by infected lice.

     Final tallies reveal that in the War of 1812 most lives did not end with a glorious death on the battlefield. James Laxer in his book Brock and Tecumseh provides the following statistics:
"About 1,600 British soldiers were killed in action, nearly 3,700 were wounded, and about 3,300 died from disease. These figures do not include casualties among the Canadian militia or native allies. The Americans lost 2,260 men, and about 4,500
were wounded. While there is no reliable figure for the number of American soldiers died of disease, it is generally reckoned that about 15,000 Americans perished from all causes during the War of 1812."Infection and disease truly are a soldier’s worst enemy.