The Fort Bayard military reservation was established in 1866. Introduction It started with a “heavy cold.”[1] In May of 1904, U.S. Army Capt. Ward Pershing experienced “prolonged exposure” while marching from Fort Leavenworth to Topeka, and by June had developed a phlegmy cough.[2] The cold had only gotten worse the following April, when Pershing sought[…]
It was in fact during the Napoleonic wars at the beginning of the 19th century that the organized practice of military medicine began. By Dr. Charles Van Way, IIIColonel, US Army Reserve, Medical Corps, RetiredEmeritus Professor of SurgeryUniversity of Missouri – Kansas City School of MedicineDirector, UMKC Shock Trauma Research Center War is an actual,[…]
Epidemics haunt history, but they shape history too, as happened in 212 BCE at Syracuse. “The dogs were the first to feel the mischief; next the birds flagged in their flight and dropped down from the black clouds; and then the beasts of the forest were laid low. Soon the infernal plague spread further, depopulating[…]
Thucydides indicates that this plague was extraordinary in that “a pestilence of such extent and mortality was nowhere remembered.” In his book, The History of the Peloponnesian War, the ancient Greek historian Thucydides provides the setting. Athens and Sparta had been the two principal leaders of the united Greeks who vanquished the mighty Persian Empire fifty[…]