1820 — Jan-March (mostly), Scurvy, Cantonment Missouri (Army), Council Bluff, NE–190

–190  Nichols. “Scurvy at Cantonment Missouri, 1819-1829.” Nebraska History, V49, 1968, 346.

–160  NebraskaStudies.org. “Fort Atkinson.” Accessed 5-23-2018.

–157  McDowell. Vitamin History, the Early Years.

 

Narrative Information

 

McDowell: “1820-Scurvy in Nebraska (USA) — Scurvy broke out in a Nebraska infantry fort; of 788 soldiers, 500 developed scurvy and 157 died. The disease was controlled by consumption of wild onions.”

 

NebraskaStudies.org: “In 1819, Colonel [Henry M.] Atkinson led a force of 1,126 riflemen up the Missouri River….The parties spent the winter in two camps, Atkinson’s troop in Camp Missouri near Council Bluffs…Through the winter, Atkinson lost 160 soldiers to the bitter cold and scurvy….Fort Atkinson was the earliest and largest town in what was to become the Nebraska Territory, and over one thousand soldiers and their families lived at this remote outpost from 1820-1827.”

 

Nichols: “….In present Nebraska, an outbreak of scurvy among the troops at Cantonment Missouri during the winter of 1819-1820 caused the first recorded epidemic within the state. [p. 333]

 

“The scurvy resulted from the unusual troop movements in 1818- and 1819, which carried American soldiers far beyond the fringes of existing settlement in an attempt to decrease the tensions and friction between frontiersmen and Indians in the Missouri River Valley….

 

“…By October 1819, nearly eight hundred officers and men had arrived near the site of present Fort Calhoun, Nebraska, hundreds of miles beyond the nearest frontier settlements. [pp. 334-335]

 

“The men of the Sixth Infantry Regiment had traveled over twenty-six hundred miles from their former position at Plattsburgh, New York, to their destination…. [p. 335]

 

“Because the ration [mostly salted meat] failed to provide the men proper nutrition, it became a health hazard.

 

“The established system of supplying the army created a second, related problem. Rather than allow the quartermaster general or the commissary general of purchases to buy foodstuffs, the army depended upon civilian contractors. Unfortunately, frontier merchants often sold diseased or poorly slated meat, spoiled flour, and scrawny, run-down cattle to the army. This poor quality merchandise made the task of keeping the troops healthy difficult, as the experience of the Missouri Expedition proved…. [p. 337]

 

“The strenuous work necessary to complete the camp buildings [by cutting down nearby trees and quarrying nearby limestone for foundations] helped to weaken some of the men. On October 3, 1819, they began clearing land for their quarters and hurrying to erect their shelters before the full force of a Nebraska winter struck….During October, November, and December, 1819, the cantonment took shape…. [p. 338]

 

“…by January, 1820 the regimental surgeons…noted that scurvy had become the most important health problem at the camp…. [p. 339]

 

“Surgeon Gale described the symptoms among the soldiers in his regiment as follows:

 

The victim of this dreadful malady is characterized by his extreme feebleness and debility, his pale and bloated complexion; his spongy black and ulcerated gums; by his loosened teeth; his {feted} urine and offensive breath; by the {watery} swelling of his legs; the livid spots on his skin and the universal discolouration of the limbs; by his stiff and swollen joints; his rigid and contracted tendons; his loss of locomotion and by wandering and excruiciating {sic} pains. [p. 340]

 

“….The scurvy outbreak began with a few reported cases during January, 1820, and by February ‘nearly the whole regiment [Sixth Infantry] sand beneath its influence.’ Late that month Surgeon Gale reported that 280 men were sick and that nearly all of them had scurvy. By March 10, this had increased to 360 men, and less than two weeks later the count stood at 345 men sick and 100 dead. On April 1, he noted that 100 infantrymen and 60 riflemen had died.[1] From these figures, it may be seen that the scurvy epidemic incapacitated or killed well over half of the garrison during February and March, 1820…. [p. 343]

 

“Of the one hundred [sick] men taken down river to Fort Osage by boat on March 25, at least twenty died enroute.

 

“To treat the remaining men thought to have a chance for survival [but to sick to move by boat], the physicians decided to move them out of the cantonment. Apparently they did this for two reasons. First, they hoped that a change of scenery would improve morale among the sick. Second they wanted to get the men out of the filthy, disease-ridden camp. The medical officers supervised moving the sick soldiers to the woods about three miles from the cantonment, where they erected a hut and tent city called Camp Recovery. There the men found wild onions[2] and got fresh meat by hunting. These additions to their died helped to end the scurvy epidemic. The stay at Camp Recovery brought what some considered near miracle recoveries. Dr. Mower cited several cases in which patients taken there in a ‘seeming moribund state’ recovered. Some of the men had already lost all of their teeth, while on others ‘large portions of the lips had sloughed off.’ In all of these cases the men recovered and eventually returned to duty…. [p. 344]

 

“The scurvy epidemic and a cut in military appropriations in 1820 caused at least one positive response. Colonel Atkinson had suggested that frontier army units could reduce War Department expenditures for food and keep themselves healthy if they got a part of their meat ration from hunting and if they could raise livestock and fresh vegetables to supplement their died. On April 10, 1820, Secretary of War John Calhoun concurred. By October of that year, Atkinson reported that the men at Cantonment Missouri had harvested 250 tons of hay for livestock, 13,000 bushels of corn, 4,000 bushels of potatoes, and 4,000 to 5,000 bushels of turnips. Apparently these vegetables and feed for livestock to provide fresh meat did help, because army deaths from scurvy dropped from 190 in 1820 to only five the next year. In fact, excluding the scurvy epidemic of 1820, there were only eleven deaths from scurvy in the army from 1819 to 1838….”[3] [pp. 345-346]

 

“….the Nebraska scurvy epidemic of 1820…[which] killed or weakened nearly one tenth of the entire [US] army, stands alone.” [p. 347]

 

Sources

 

Levine, Victor E. “Scurvy in Nebraska: The Epidemic of Scurvy at Cantonment Missouri (Fort Atkinson), Nebraska, 1819-1820.” American Journal of Digestive Diseases,” Vol. 22, Issue 1, Jan 1955, pp. 9-17. Preview accessed 5-23-2018 at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02881510

 

McDowell, Lee R. Vitamin History, the Early Years. University of Florida, 2013. Google preview accessed 5-23-2018 at: https://books.google.com/books?id=bb9xPf6JqLgC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

NebraskaStudies.org. “Fort Atkinson.” Accessed 5-23-2018 at: http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0400/frameset_reset.html?http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0400/stories/0401_0131.html

 

Nichols, Roger L. “Scurvy at Cantonment Missouri, 1819-1829.” Nebraska History, Vol. 49, 1968, pp. 333-347. Accessed 5-24-2018 at: https://history.nebraska.gov/sites/history.nebraska.gov/files/doc/publications/NH1968Scurvy.pdf

 

Additional Resource

 

Reals, William J. “Scurvy at Fort Atkinson, 1819-1820, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Vol. 23, No. 2, March-April 1949, pp. 137-154.

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Including just one officer. (p. 343)

[2] A good source for vitamin C.

[3] Cites: Risch, Quartermaster Support, p. 204.