How George Washington Saved The Continental Army From A Deadly Disease
- 'Hey Morans: How George Washington Saved The Continental Army From A Deadly Disease,' Daily Kos, April 20, 2020.
So the morans were out demonstrating against stay-at-home orders with signs reading 1776 and twisted versions of Revolutionary War slogans such as Give Me Liberty or Give Me COVID-19. If they had been around back in 1776, we might still be part of the British Empire.
So a little history lesson is in order. If I staged a counter-protest, Id hold up a sign reading 1777. After the Redcoats had captured the American capital of Philadelphia, George Washington encamped his 12,000-man Continental Army in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. About 1,700 to 2,000 soldiers died from disease during the six months from December 1777 to June 1778. from outbreaks of typhoid, dysentery, influenza and pneumonia.
The death toll might have been even worse possibly eliminating the Continental Army as an effective fighting force if Washington had not taken immediate steps to curb an outbreak of smallpox at Valley Forge. Washington ordered an investigation and discovered that several thousand troops had not gotten inoculated against smallpox...
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(143,998 posts)I love history. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it
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Thats why Washington eventually made the bold decision to inoculate all American troops who had never been sickened with smallpox at a time when inoculation was a crude and often deadly process. His gamble paid off. The measure staved off smallpox long enough to win a years-long fight with the British. In the process, Washington pulled off the first massive, state-funded immunization campaign in American history......
By the following winter, Washington and his troops were camped in Morristown, New Jersey, where the threat of smallpox was as dire as ever. Americas stoic general waffled back and forth on whether to inoculate or not, even making the mass inoculation order and then rescinding it. Finally, on February 5, 1777, he made the call in a letter to John Hancock, president of the Second Continental Congress.
The small pox has made such Head in every Quarter that I find it impossible to keep it from spreading thro the whole Army in the natural way. I have therefore determined, not only to innoculate all the Troops now here, that have not had it, but shall order Docr. Shippen to innoculate the Recruits as fast as they come in to Philadelphia.
Fenn says that inoculating all troops without natural smallpox immunity was a daunting task. First, medical personnel had to examine each individual to determine if they had contracted the disease in the past, then they conducted the risky variolation procedure, followed by a month-long recovery process attended by teams of nurses.
Meanwhile, this entire processthe first of its kind and scalehad to be conducted in total secrecy. If the British caught wind that large numbers of American soldiers were laid up in bed with smallpox, it could be the end.