Mosquitoes, Malaria and the Civil War

Mosquitoes, Malaria and the Civil War

Not many Americans think about mosquitoes and malaria on Nov. 11, Veterans' Day.

But they should.

The mosquito played a major adversarial role in our nation's Civil War. Some 30,000 soldiers died of malaria, and more than half of the 2.75 million soldiers who served contracted the disease, statistics show. 

And that occurred when physicians had not yet linked the Anopheles mosquito with malaria.

One of the soldiers who contracted malaria during the 47-day Siege of Vicksburg, launched May 18, 1863, was my great-grandfather, Samuel Davidson Laughlin (1843-1910), a Union color bearer.

An 18-year-old farm boy from Linn, Mo.,  he was selected a color bearer for his height (6' 3"), his strength (hoisting the flag and keeping it high) and his courage (front lines). 

Young Samuel carried the flag through three of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War: the Battle of Lookout Mountain, and the battles of Chicamauga and Chattanooga. A musket tore a hole in his flag but he emerged from the Civil War physically unscathed.

However, at the Siege of Vicksburg, "he caught malaria in the Yazoo swamps of the Yazoo River," his youngest daughter Esther recounted to me. "He said they'd spread their blankets and they'd be lying in the water in the morning. The only way they could keep out of the water was to throw fence rails down and put their blankets on top of that. That's where he picked up malaria. There was no sanitation whatsoever, and of course, they had to use the water there for drinking."

Ironically, after surviving the Civil War, he died from blood poisoning when a splinter lodged in his hand as he was carrying firewood to his family home in Castle Rock, Wash.  He is buried on a knoll overlooking the round barn that he built in 1883 (the barn is now in the National Register of Historic Places). Noah Coughlan paid tribute to Laughlin in a video in his run across America last year.

Malaria during the Civil War? Physicians had not yet connected malaria to Anopheles mosquitoes. They believed "humidity" or “swamp effluvia" caused what they called "intermittent fever." It wasn't until 1880 that a French Army surgeon, Alphonse Laveran, discovered that malaria is caused by protozoa of the genus Plasmodium.

"Nineteenth-century physicians diagnosed malaria as a recurrent, intermittent, or 'periodic' fever and categorized it according to how often fever spikes or 'paroxysms' occurred," according to Lloyd Klein and Eric Wittenberg of San Francisco, in Hektoen International, a Journal of Medical Humanities. "A 'quotidian' fever occurs once every twenty-four hours, a 'tertian' every forty-eight, and a 'quartan' every seventy-two." The authors related that of the 30,000 malaria deaths during the Civil War, 10,000 were Union soldiers.

In his research on "A History of Malaria and Conflict," published in Parsitology Research on March 20, 2024, Jonas Mertens'  wrote this abstract: 

"Malaria has halted many military campaigns in the past, with prominent examples ranging from antiquity through the medieval period and into the modern era. The parasitosis still continues to play an important role in the outcome of warfare and follow-up events today and is of special public health importance in areas of the Global South, where most of its endemicity and some of the most brutal conflicts of our time are located. Vice versa, wars and ensuing population movements increase malaria transmission and morbidity as well as impede control efforts. Awareness of this and the development of strategies to overcome both malaria and wars will massively improve the well-being of the population affected."

Wrote Gary Miller in his 1997 piece published in Historical Natural History

"Malaria was termed 'simple intermittent fever' by the medical professionals, but the soldiers referred to the malady as ague or "the shakes." Malaria was so prevalent in some camps that a standard greeting was "Have you had the shakes?" (Wiley 1992). There were over 1.3 million cases and 10,000 deaths from malaria in the Union Army (Steiner 1968). Fully one quarter of all illness reported in the Union Army was malarial in character (Wiley 1992). Confederate soldiers also suffered, although fatalities from the disease were comparatively lower. In 1861 and 1862, one seventh of all cases of sickness reported by Rebel armies east of the Mississippi was malarial (Wiley 1994). Malaria greatly affected at least one campaign. The prevalence of the disease among Union troops contributed in thwarting the first Federal attempt to capture Vicksburg, MS, in 1862 (Steiner 1968); the city did not fall until the following year."

Fast forward to today. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention relates: 

"Malaria was common in the United States into the 20th century. Most of the continental United States has Anopheles mosquitoes (particularly An. freeborni and An. quadrimaculatus), which can spread malaria.

  • Local U.S. mosquito-borne spread has resulted in more than 150 locally acquired cases and more than 60 limited outbreaks in the United States over the past 50 years.
  • In addition, more than 2,000 cases of malaria are reported annually in the United States, with most cases occurring in returned travelers."

Recognize the name An. freeborni, commonly known as the western malaria mosquito? It memorializes Stanley Barron Freeborn (1891-1960), an entomologist who served as the first UC Davis chancellor (between 1958 and June 1959). He  studied mosquitoes and malaria with UC Berkeley professor William Herms (1876-1949) and gained worldwide recognition as an authority on malariology, the scientific study of malaria. 

And freeborni? It's an overwintering mosquito described as "a fairly large, brown mosquito with long legs and dark spots on each wing. It is a vicious biter and enters houses readily. This mosquito is found throughout most of California and is a severe pest in rice growing areas. Anopheles freeborni was involved in the malaria epidemics during the late 1800s and early 1900s in northern California." (Published by the Shasta Mosquito and Vector Control District, see source).

Meanwhile, the research continues, not just on Veterans' Day but every day.