How a Few Lucky Civil War Soldiers Started Glowing and Healed Faster
June 29, 2018
Written byReuben Westmaas
Imagine you are a Civil War soldier with a mid-19th-century layman’s understanding of medicine. Good news: you helped drive the Confederates back and survived the Battle of Shiloh. Bad news: you’re wounded, and you’ve been waiting for a medic for two days on a rainy battlefield. Worse news: to your horror, that wound has started to … glow. Never mind that archaic understanding of medicine — we’re still freaked out 156 years later.
The Battle of Shiloh was one of the first major battles of the American Civil War, and one of the first bloodbaths as well. Although the Union was victorious, both sides suffered heavy losses, and neither was truly prepared for the scope of the conflict. All told, the Battle of Shiloh left more than 3,000 dead and 16,000 wounded, and like many Civil War battles, the deadliest risk came after the bullets stopped flying and the wounds started festering. To make matters worse, the wounded that were unable to carry themselves from the fray were left to suffer for two days in the mud and the rain before medical help (such as it was at the time) arrived. That can’t be good for preventing an infection. Fortunately, those soldiers had angels looking out for them.
At least, that’s what it looked like. In an astonishing, and frankly spooky, turn of events, as night fell, many of those wounded soldiers began to see a strange glow emanating from their wounds.
They called it “Angel’s Glow” and it lived up to its nickname. When they were eventually recovered and moved to the field hospital, the soldiers whose wounds had been so blessed ended up recovering better and faster, with cleaner wounds and a better survival rate than the un-glowing.
This really would sound downright impossible if it weren’t for the fact that it’s so well documented.
When P. Luminescens Comes Marching Home
In 2001, an answer finally came to the supernatural mystery, and it came from an unlikely source: a 17-year-old high school student. Bill Martin was visiting the battlefield of Shiloh with his mother Phyllis Martin, a microbiologist at the USDA Agricultural Research Service. Hearing the story of the glowing soldiers, he thought about another story his mother had told him: the story of the bioluminescent bacteria Photorhabdus luminescens, which glows with a pale blue light. He and his friend John Curtis decided to conduct an experiment to find out if that little critter could be the culprit.
The students found that P. luminescens would indeed have been well-suited to surviving in the mud at Shiloh, but that the inside of the human body was probably too hot. However, they realized that since the soldiers would have been experiencing the cool Tennessee nights from the bottom of a mud puddle in the pouring rain, they may well have been experiencing hypothermia, which would lower their temperatures enough for the bacteria to thrive.
P. luminescens normally survives by hitching a ride on a parasitic nematode and chowing down on the insects that nematode infects. It’s a complicated and somewhat nauseating life cycle that starts up again by creating a glowing insect corpse that attracts more insects to infect. A crucial part of that process is when P. luminescens makes room for itself and for its parasitic host by cleaning up all of the other bacteria in its way. If this glowing duo happened to find its way into a human wound instead of the insects it normally hunts, it’d clean that wound right up. And since it’s not especially infectious to humans (although it certainly can be), P. luminescens is usually no match for our immune systems. There you have it: we wouldn’t recommend introducing a new parasite to fight your infections today, but as Civil War medicine goes, it’s certainly preferable to a field amputation. There might not be any images of the glowing soldiers on that bizarre battlefield, but the American Civil War is still one of the first wars to be documented with the exactness of photography. Flip through “The Civil War: A Visual History” (put out by the Smithsonian) to see exactly what the brave soldiers of the Union went through. We handpick reading recommendations we think you may like. If you choose to make a purchase through that link, Curiosity will get a share of the sale.
If you haven’t noticed it, Mike Ford had been trying to lighten the front page a bit on Sunday’s with a humorous story. Mike is on the road this week helping his parents relocate so he was sniveling on the email list yesterday asking for someone to keep the home fires lit, of LAF, as they say these days.
There were no volunteers, so Jenn Van Laar texted me early this morning to ask me to do one. Unfortunately, my wife used my phone first…try explaining getting an early morning (Eastern) text from a woman your wife doesn’t know.
I don’t think you can really be a combat arms officer or career combat arms NCO and not amass a repertoire of funny–or off color–stories.
And, to a great extent, those are the things you remember. You forget the mindless bullsh**. You forget (most of) the arrogant and incompetent senior officers you had to deal with. You forget sitting in an arroyo at 2 a.m. in a driving 40-degree rainstorm waiting for your LD time and shivering, as my boss would say, like an old dog sh***ing peach seeds.
You remember the funny stuff and the camaraderie and the satisfaction of doing a hard job well. When our first daughter was very young, I remarked to my wife, a mechanical engineer, that I’d like our kids to at least pass through the military.
She wasn’t all that happy about the idea. She said, “Just promise me you won’t push them into it.” I told her, “Sweetie, I have a lot more funny Army stories than you have funny engineering stories, by they time they get old enough, they’ll want to go.” My eldest is a college sophomore enrolled in Air Force (hack, spit) ROTC. One down, two to go.
The highlight of any young infantry officer’s life is company command. There is nothing in the world like it. You are a warlord. You are the the Biblical Centurion–“I say unto one, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.” Sometimes the raw material is not exactly what one would hope.
What follows is an actual true story as opposed to a “no sh**” story which is a story that may or may not have happened and you may or may not have been involved but you tell it anyway because it is funny or gross.
I commanded a Combat Support Company in 7th Infantry Division (later the division converted to light infantry, the combat support company was disbanded and I was given the honor of taking a rifle company) and one of our main training areas was Fort Hunter Liggett (Hungry Lizard), California.
On this particular deployment–we were down range for a couple of weeks and when you’re not in your own bed it doesn’t matter if you are 5 miles or 5000 miles from home–my company’s main mission was to live fire Tube Launched, Optically Tracked, Wire Guided (aka TOW) missiles. We used an ad hoc impact area in a section of post called Stoney Valley.
As we were regular infantry, rather than mechanized, my launchers were all carried on the venerable M151A2 quarter-ton truck, known to you guys as a Jeep.
Public domain image via wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGM-71_TOW#/media/File:TOW_fired_from_Jeep.jpg
We fired the day tables and then had a several hour lull while we waited for dark. At the time my division was a low-priority division and even though TOW night sights were available, they had not trickled down to us.
Night shoots were conducted as coordinated illumination missions with my 4.2-inch (aka four-deuce) mortar platoon (the beast weighed in at 672-pounds, the Army tells you it is “man portable over short distances,” don’t believe it).
The mortars would fire an illumination round and the TWO platoon would engage targets while that parachute flare lit up the impact area.
Here’s the Greek Army firing one. Professional armies don’t look a lot like this but you get the general picture.
It was after the evening meal and I was walking my gun line, talking to the guys and making a final check on their knowledge of the sequence of events for the night. As I neared the end of the firing line I heard some squealing and troops laughing.
These are never good things to hear. As I approached the last gun truck I could see a bunch of my troops gathered in a knot and the squealing got louder and more pronounced. I bulled my way though the growing mob and saw one of my troops holding squirming piglet and twisting its tail.
A short digression:
As you can see from the map clip, we were right across the mountains from Big Sur and not terrible far from the Hearst Castle, the palatial estate of William Randolph Hearst. Hearst, like quite a lot of other rich guys, imported exotic animals for his game preserve.
One of his import was the Eurasian boar. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t take to being penned up and escaped and found California’s climate to their liking and mated with feral pigs (the four legged variety, not those frequented the enlisted mens’ club in search of companionship) and produced a prolific and somewhat violent breed.
I’d had an unpleasant experience with their relatives at Grafenwoehr, Germany and decided to share my wisdom.
“What the f*** are you f***ing morons doing?” I inquired.
“Oh, sir, this is a baby wild pig and if we make it squeal it’s mother will come.”
“Right. That’s a m*********ing baby wild boar and have you morons thought through what will happen when she gets here?”
I gave them some rather detailed instructions on where to search to find their heads and, out of an ample sense of caution, I ordered the platoon moved. We didn’t see momma pig, and we finished up the night shoot without incident. True story. No sh**.
If you want a joke, this one explains about 99% of what goes on in Washington today.
A school system in Massachusetts is proving to be malicious, incompetent, or maybe both.
Of course, we suspected that already. But the latest example comes from a lawsuit from a woman who pulled her 8-year-old son from Worcester Public Schools to homeschool him last January.
Josilyn Goodall is suing the Worcester School Committee, Superintendent Maureen Binienda, and the state Department of Children and Families after police entered her home, handcuffed her, and arrested her over what amounted to a paperwork dispute.
According to the lawsuit, Goodall is seeking unspecified compensatory damages for the violation of her Constitutional rights and for the “mental pain and suffering” inflicted upon her and her son.
The lawsuit details Goodall’s multiple attempts to contact the Superintendent after filing paperwork in January saying she was going to homeschool her son. She said she never got a response to any of her phone calls or emails.
In Massachusetts, parents who wish to homeschool their children must submit an education plan to the superintendent of the local school system for approval. However, according to Care and Protection of Charles (1987), the court case upon which homeschool legal precedent was established, the burden of proof is on the school to show that the homeschool program is insufficient.
The lawsuit further alleges that the Worcester School Committee’s homeschool policy is unlawful, in that it requires students to continue attending public school until the education plan is approved. Charles allows for homeschooling to begin as soon as the plan has been submitted.
To most rational people, Charles makes sense. If parents are to have any right to educate their children at home, they must be able to begin homeschooling before receiving approval from the schools. Otherwise, a school could conveniently hold hostage the education plan and never approve it, essentially forcing the child to stay in the public school.
But instead of following the state law or even their own policy, Worcester school administrators ignored Goodall’s education plan and her attempts to contact them, continued marking her son absent, and never reached out to Goodall to discuss their concerns.
It would be hard to tell if the school was being passive-aggressive or just plain incompetent, unable to send or receive emails and phone calls. Except that they had no problem contacting the Department of Children and Families to report Goodall for “educational neglect.”
DCF officials apparently took the school’s word for it, never asking for attendance records for Goodall’s son before showing up at her door on March 30. In addition, a DCF investigator believed the superintendent’s secretary, who told her there was a new law that required homeschooled students to continue attending school until their education plan was approved.
Yes, a state department took legal advice from a superintendent’s secretary.
Then, police escalated the situation, to the surprise of absolutely no one. The lawsuit states that officers pounded on Goodall’s door and threatened to forcibly open it. When Goodall was intimidated into letting them in, an officer laid hands on Goodall, handcuffed her, ordered her into a chair and yelled in her face — while her son watched and cried.
Additional officers arrived and started searching the home, while the DCF investigator questioned the son. Goodall was arrested and brought to the police station and was booked, though no charges were filed. She paid bail and finally made it back home after a 7-hour ordeal.
The legal battle continued with DCF filing a complaint of educational neglect that was eventually dropped by the court. Goodall submitted another education plan to the Superintendent on April 10.
You would think school officials would jump right on it this time around, but they dragged their feet yet again. Goodall left another voicemail and sent an email before finally hearing from the secretary on April 25. Her plan was not officially approved until May 9, after Goodall’s legal counsel wrote a letter essentially asking the Superintendent’s Office to piss or get off the pot.
Goodall’s ordeal is just the most extreme of many examples of harassment and intimidation the Worcester School District is doling out to homeschoolers.
According to the Worcester Telegram, many homeschooling families were waiting on District approval of their education plans months after submitting them. To add to the stress, many were receiving letters that said they could face truancy charges if their children were not in school and they had not received approval.
The hypocrisy of the District is astounding. Rather than sending approval letters—or even rejection letters— in a timely fashion, they sent letters threatening parents, as though it was the parents’ fault that their plan might not be approved “in time.”
While it is bad news that school administrators seem intent on harassing homeschoolers and escalating disputes, there is a silver lining to this whole issue.
We’re not going to take it.
Homeschoolers routinely show up in large numbers to protect their right to homeschool their children. The Homeschool Legal Defense Association hosted an informational forum on Aug. 15 in Worcester to discuss the concerns of local homeschooling families and to clarify the state’s laws.
As a Massachusetts homeschooler myself, I attended the meeting. There were upwards of 100 people in attendance from Worcester and surrounding towns. The group shared advice, made plans to turn out en masse to School Committee meetings, and made sure they were educated on what is and is not legally required in state homeschool law.
This one comes via WiscoDave.
No, to rational people, the Charles law doesn’t have to make sense. In fact, I can discern where you stand by asking you two questions: [1] Who owns children, and [2] To whom have they been given for governance and training?
My answers are simple: [1] God, and [2] Parents. If you believe that parents own children, you believe in slavery and you deny God’s ownership of all of His creatures. You own your dog, not your children. If you believe that anyone but the parents have been given responsibility for governance and oversight, teaching, training, love, discipline, correction and rebuke, you are a communist.
The reason the government of Massachusetts declares they have a right to decide what is appropriate education for children is because they are communists. God does not recognize their authority in any of this, and His wrath will come down upon them, more than likely in time and space, and certainly and without fail, in eternity.
Public schools are centers of communist indoctrination and socialization. And just to make clear that I know my facts, my wife and I were once part of a small group church fellowship based on home schooling. One former home schooler now flies F-35s, another graduated from the Naval Academy, the Navy nuclear school, and commanded aboard a submarine.
Still others from that group went into the military, and my daughter is a Nurse Practitioner with a Master’s degree, ER experience and cardiology experience, and today is a “first-assist” for surgery.
There are hundreds of thousands of such examples in America and in fact all over the world. Don’t tell me that children need the state to educate them. I know that to be a lie.
The educational system and cops in Massachusetts aren’t liars -they’re just communists. They know they aren’t needed, they just want the control. The desire to control others is the first sign, incorrigible pathology and premier sin of the wicked.
Don’t inquire into a person’s past. Take the measure of a man for what he is today.
Never steal another man’s horse. A horse thief pays with his life.
Defend yourself whenever necessary.
Look out for your own.
Remove your guns before sitting at the dining table.
Never order anything weaker than whiskey.
Don’t make a threat without expecting dire consequences.
Never pass anyone on the trail without saying “Howdy”.
When approaching someone from behind, give a loud greeting before you get within shooting range.
Don’t wave at a man on a horse, as it might spook the horse. A nod is the proper greeting.
After you pass someone on the trail, don’t look back at him. It implies you don’t trust him.
Riding another man’s horse without his permission is nearly as bad as making love to his wife. Never even bother another man’s horse.
Always fill your whiskey glass to the brim.
A cowboy doesn’t talk much; he saves his breath for breathing.
No matter how weary and hungry you are after a long day in the saddle, always tend to your horse’s needs before your own, and get your horse some feed before you eat.
Cuss all you want, but only around men, horses and cows.
Complain about the cooking and you become the cook.
Cowboy Drinking
Always drink your whiskey with your gun hand, to show your friendly intentions.
Do not practice ingratitude.
A cowboy is pleasant even when out of sorts. Complaining is what quitters do, and cowboys hate quitters.
Always be courageous. Cowards aren’t tolerated in any outfit worth its salt.
A cowboy always helps someone in need, even a stranger or an enemy.
Never try on another man’s hat.
Be hospitable to strangers. Anyone who wanders in, including an enemy, is welcome at the dinner table. The same was true for riders who joined cowboys on the range.
Give your enemy a fighting chance.
Never wake another man by shaking or touching him, as he might wake suddenly and shoot you.
Real cowboys are modest. A braggert who is “all gurgle and no guts” is not tolerated.
Be there for a friend when he needs you.
Drinking on duty is grounds for instant dismissal and blacklisting.
A cowboy is loyal to his “brand,” to his friends, and those he rides with.
Never shoot an unarmed or unwarned enemy. This was also known as “the rattlesnake code”: always warn before you strike. However, if a man was being stalked, this could be ignored.
Never shoot a woman no matter what.
Consideration for others is central to the code, such as: Don’t stir up dust around the chuck wagon, don’t wake up the wrong man for herd duty, etc.
Respect the land and the environment by not smoking in hazardous fire areas, disfiguring rocks, trees, or other natural areas.
Honesty is absolute – your word is your bond, a handshake is more binding than a contract.
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