Health Of The Seventh Cavalry

With its charismatic leader George Custer and its memorable encounters with Plains Indians, including the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the Seventh Cavalry serves as the iconic regiment in the post–Civil War U.S Army. Voluminous written documentation as well as archaeological and osteological research suggest that the soldiers of the Seventh represented a cross section of the men who joined the army as a whole at the time. In Health of the Seventh Cavalry, editors P. Willey and Douglas D. Scott and their co-contributors—experts in history, medicine, human biology, epidemiology, and human osteology—examine the Seventh’s medical records to determine the health of the nineteenth-century U.S. Army, and the prevalence and treatment of the numerous conditions that plagued soldiers during the Indian Wars. Building on previous comparisons of archaeological evidence and medical records, Willey and Scott follow multiple lines of inquiry to assess the health of the Seventh, from its organization in 1866 to its 1884 station on the Northern Great Plains. Pairing general overviews of nineteenth- and twentieth-century health care with essays on malaria, injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other specific ailments, Health of the Seventh Cavalry provides fresh insights into the health, disease, and trauma that the regiment experienced over two decades. More than 100 tables, graphs, and maps track the troops’ illnesses and diseases by month, season, year, and location, as well as their stress periods, desertions, and deaths. A glossary of medical terms rounds out the volume. As an ideal exemplar of regiments of its time, the Seventh Cavalry affords scholars and enthusiasts a better understanding of nineteenth-century health and medicine. This volume reveals the struggles that the post–Civil War Seventh, and the entire U.S. Army, faced on the battlefield and elsewhere.

“The drums they roll, upon my soul, for that’s the way we go,” runs the chorus in a Harrigan and Hart song from 1874. “Forty miles a day on beans and hay in the Regular Army O!” The last three words of that lyric aptly title Douglas C. McChristian’s remarkable work capturing the lot of soldiers posted to the West after the Civil War. At once panoramic and intimate, Regular Army O! uses the testimony of enlisted soldiers—drawn from more than 350 diaries, letters, and memoirs—to create a vivid picture of life in an evolving army on the western frontier. After the volunteer troops that had garrisoned western forts and camps during the Civil War were withdrawn in 1865, the regular army replaced them. In actions involving American Indians between 1866 and 1891, 875 of these soldiers were killed, mainly in minor skirmishes, while many more died of disease, accident, or effects of the natural environment. What induced these men to enlist for five years and to embrace the grim prospect of combat is one of the enduring questions this book explores. Going well beyond Don Rickey Jr.’s classic work Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay (1963), McChristian plumbs the regulars’ accounts for frank descriptions of their training to be soldiers; their daily routines, including what they ate, how they kept clean, and what they did for amusement; the reasons a disproportionate number occasionally deserted, while black soldiers did so only rarely; how the men prepared for field service; and how the majority who survived mustered out. In this richly drawn, uniquely authentic view, men black and white, veteran and tenderfoot, fill in the details of the frontier soldier’s experience, giving voice to history in the making.

Of the three physicians at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Doctor George Edwin Lord (1846–76) was the lone commissioned medical officer, an assistant surgeon with the United States Army’s 7th Cavalry—one more soldier caught up in the U.S. government’s efforts to fulfill what many people believed was the young country’s “Manifest Destiny.” A Life Cut Short at the Little Big Horn tells Lord’s story for the first time. Notable for its unique angle on Custer’s last stand and for its depiction of frontier-era medicine, the book is above all a compelling portrait of the making of an army medical professional in mid-nineteenth-century America. Drawing on newly discovered documents, Todd E. Harburn describes Lord’s education and training at Bowdoin College in Maine and the Chicago Medical College, detailing what the study of medicine entailed at the time for “a young man of promise . . . held in universal esteem.” Lord’s time as a contract physician with the army took him in 1874 to the U.S. Northern Boundary Survey. From there Harburn recounts how, after a failed romance and the rigors of the U.S. Army Medical Board examination, the young doctor proceeded to his first—and only—appointment as a post surgeon, at Fort Buford in Dakota Territory. What followed, of course, was Lord’s service, and his death, in the Little Big Horn campaign, which this book shows us for the first time from the unique perspective of the surgeon. A portrait of a singular figure in the milieu of the American military’s nineteenth-century medical elite, A Life Cut Short at the Little Big Horn offers a close look at a familiar chapter in U.S. history, and a reminder of the humanity lost in a battle that resonates to this day.

Young George Belden lived one of the most remarkable of lives of any man on the western frontier of America. A runaway at 13, he lived among the Sioux, learning their language and ways, and married a young Sioux woman to whom he became very attached. Though a young man, he was regarded as a writer of merit in regards to his work on Native Americans. He later served in the U.S Army cavalry with Major James Brisbin, who collected the material you're about to read from Belden's diaries and manuscripts. Brisbin was also a writer of note in his day and was also part of the Montana Column under General John Gibbon that was slated to unite with General George Armstrong Custer at the Little Bighorn. Belden's time among the Indians was exciting, fraught with danger, amusing, and even heartwarming. This edition contains new material and annotations for a modern audience. Every memoir of the American West provides us with another view of a time that changed the country forever. For the first time, this long out-of-print volume is available as an affordable, well-formatted book for e-readers and smartphones. Be sure to LOOK INSIDE by clicking the cover above or download a sample.

Dead men tell no tales, and the soldiers who rode and died with George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn have been silent statistics for more than a hundred years. By blending historical sources, archaeological evidence, and painstaking analysis of the skeletal remains, Douglas D. Scott, P. Willey, and Melissa A. Connor reconstruct biographies of many of the individual soldiers, identifying age, height, possible race, state of health, and the specific way each died. They also link reactions to the battle over the years to shifts in American views regarding the appropriate treatment of the dead.

A pioneering and groundbreaking work of narrative nonfiction that offers a dramatic new perspective on the history of humankind, showing how through millennia, the mosquito has been the single most powerful force in determining humanity’s fate Why was gin and tonic the cocktail of choice for British colonists in India and Africa? What does Starbucks have to thank for its global domination? What has protected the lives of popes for millennia? Why did Scotland surrender its sovereignty to England? What was George Washington's secret weapon during the American Revolution? The answer to all these questions, and many more, is the mosquito. Across our planet since the dawn of humankind, this nefarious pest, roughly the size and weight of a grape seed, has been at the frontlines of history as the grim reaper, the harvester of human populations, and the ultimate agent of historical change. As the mosquito transformed the landscapes of civilization, humans were unwittingly required to respond to its piercing impact and universal projection of power. The mosquito has determined the fates of empires and nations, razed and crippled economies, and decided the outcome of pivotal wars, killing nearly half of humanity along the way. She (only females bite) has dispatched an estimated 52 billion people from a total of 108 billion throughout our relatively brief existence. As the greatest purveyor of extermination we have ever known, she has played a greater role in shaping our human story than any other living thing with which we share our global village. Imagine for a moment a world without deadly mosquitoes, or any mosquitoes, for that matter? Our history and the world we know, or think we know, would be completely unrecognizable. Driven by surprising insights and fast-paced storytelling, The Mosquito is the extraordinary untold story of the mosquito’s reign through human history and her indelible impact on our modern world order.

The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published daily when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record began publication in 1873. Debates for sessions prior to 1873 are recorded in The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (1789-1824), the Register of Debates in Congress (1824-1837), and the Congressional Globe (1833-1873)

The history of South Carolina’s lowcountry has been well documented by historians, but the upcountry—the region of the state north and west of Columbia and the geologic fall line—has only recently begun to receive extensive scholarly attention. The essays in this collection provide a window into the social and cultural life of the upstate during the nineteenth century. The contributors explore topics ranging from the history of education in the region to the pugnacity of the Scots-Irish, from post–Civil War occupation by Union troops to upcountry tourism, from the Freedman’s Bureau’s efforts to educate African Americans to the complex dynamics of lynch mobs in the late nineteenth century. Recovering the Piedmont Past illustrates larger trends of social transformation occurring in the region at a time that shaped religion, education, race relations and the economy well into the twentieth century. The essays add depth and complexity to our understanding of nineteenth century southern history and challenge accepted narratives about a homogeneous South. Ultimately each of the eight essays explores little known facets of the history of upcountry South Carolina in the nineteenth century. The collection includes a foreword by Orville Vernon Burton, professor of history and director of the Cyberinstitute at Clemson University.