Field hospital in Virginia.
The weapons were different back then, and battlefield medicine has been revolutionized, but scientists studying medical records from the U.S. Civil War of 1860-65 say long-term effects of war on veterans are much the same. Roxane Cohen Silver and colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, have identified more illness, both mental and physical, among Civil War veterans who were exposed to the greatest war trauma.
The researchers matched military records from 15,027 Union Army soldiers with subsequent pension and health records. In the February Archives of General Psychiatry, they report that 44% of the men reported signs of mental or "nervous" disease after the war, something that was called "irritable heart" by 19th century physicians. "There are a few detractors that say that PTSD [posttraumatic stress disorder] does not exist or has been exaggerated," says Joseph Boscarino, senior investigator at Geisinger Health System in Danville, Pennsylvania. "Studies such as these are making it difficult to ignore the long-term effects of war-related psychological trauma."
During the Civil War, more than 15% of those fighting enlisted while still under 18, and some were as young as 9. These were 93% more likely than their older comrades to experience later illnesses. Using the percentage of a veteran's company lost to quantify his exposure to trauma, the researchers found that those who lost at least 5% of their company had a 51% increased risk of later development of cardiac, gastrointestinal, or nervous disease.
CREDIT: BETTMANN/CORBIS
