Typhoid Fever

It raged in Army training camps, especially in Chickamauga, Georgia (almost 10% of 80,000 contracted it), and “was scandalous because typhoid was known to be a water-borne bacterial disease transmitted through the oral-fecal route, that is, poor sanitation.”. Unlike yellow fever, attacks did not induce immunity and lasted weeks rather than a single week. According to William Gorgas, who fell victim, “typhoid fever was the ‘signature event’ of the war, with more than twenty thousand cases and almost 1,600 deaths . . . Final death statistics of 345 deaths from wounds and 2,485 deaths of disease presented a 1:7 ration of combat deaths to disease deaths, far worse than the 1:2 rate of the Civil War” (Byerly, 77-79).