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[Virginia Mescher]

Re: Authentic Salt Pork

So as I understand it, salt pork of the day could include other cuts of meat, like shoulder, not just pork bellies of modern salt pork? There must have been a high percentage of pork bellies though, hence the term "Sow Belly" used so often at the time.

The different cuts of pork used in the various grades of salt pork was explained in my first post on salt pork.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary "sow belly" is an American slang for salted side of pork so it apparently did not just refer to the belly.

Bacon was the cured and smoked breast and could be made from sides or belly of the hog. The 1861 Webster's dictionary defines bacon as "Hog's flesh (sometimes that of bear) salted or pickled [brined] and dried, usually in smoke."

[FC Barlow]

Re: Authentic Salt Pork

As a salt pork substitute, try boiling some fresh red meat next time. Try doing it either before the event or on the Friday night before you sack out. Once boiled, the meat will usually last all weekend.

In general, armies on the march (especially Union forces) traveled with a herd of cattle that were butchered to feed the men in the field. Of course, this doesn't work for every scenario, but its usually pretty accurate to carry fresh meat.

[Vuhginyuh]

Re: Authentic Salt Pork

So as I understand it, salt pork of the day could include other cuts of meat, like shoulder, not just pork bellies of modern salt pork? There must have been a high percentage of pork bellies though, hence the term "Sow Belly" used so often at the time.

Read post Virginia's post above (#3), it is spelled out clearly.... and any cut of meat can be salt cured and air dryed or smoked.

Some very fat meat like fat back and streaky-lean are packed raw in vats of dry salt for curing.

Poaching or soaking meat in a salt brine is pickling or corning. This brine is usually washed off and sometimes the meat is soaked in fresh water for a time and then rinsed off. This is as common around here today as it was three centuries ago.

[billwatson]

An added question

How about this: It's been my understanding that a lot of meat for northern armies came from meat processing plants -- enormous factory-like operations where live animals went in one end and a variety of meat products, intended for a variety of destinations, went the other. Those meat packers got the contract to supply the armies with "processed" meats. It's also been my understanding that this was not so much the case in the South, that the processed/preserved meats came from many smaller operations, bought up from farmers and plantations and whatnot. Anyone shed any light on whether that's so, and, if so, what the implications are between what a Yankee would get issued in the field and what a Southerner might expect? (My initial thought was that the rank and file Yankee could expect a pretty consistent pork product taken from the less attractive cuts of pig, the belly and breast, while the Southerner might find that "less consistency" occasionally meant finding a chunk of ham in there somewhere, but WOULD involve some meats that had been smoked, even peppered as described, not just brined or salted.)

I'm throwing it out for discussion, not in assertion of anything....

[Vuhginyuh]

Re: Authentic Salt Pork

...meat for northern armies came from meat processing plants -- enormous factory-like operations where live animals went in one end and a variety of meat products...

And from the industrial meat processors of the Civil War grew The Jungle.

[KarinTimour]

Re: Effects of diet on soldiers?

Dear Noah:

I saw your note responding to your concerns about my note about the food fed to those with facial injuries.

Regretfully, I have to report that after about two weeks of rereading various sources on hospitals, nursing, diet, etc. that I'm unable to find the reference that left me with that impression. I'm sorry that I may have mislead people with my posting.

I think that the misimpression I got grew from when I was first researching nursing. I thought that this could be a potential impression when I first got involved in reenacting, and did quite a bit of reading of first person diaries, letters, etc. I suspect that where I went off the track was the definition of "hospital" -- many writers use this term to refer interchangably to what we would now call (using non-period terminology) "forward dressing stations," "MASH units" as well as the larger general hospitals located in Washington and larger cities.

I think I may have read about someone who had spent several days in transit on hospital boats, or who may have been left on the field for several days before being able to be moved. Thus, he wasn't supplied with anything to eat, and was carried in by stretcher, with his original rations intact, because he was unable to eat them after being wounded.

I do think that the quality and quantity of liquid food availble varied a great deal (will post references on this later this week when I'm a bit more caught up). In Frank Moore's "Women in the War" there is a great quote about a nurse who arrived in the hospital and the patients were always complaining about the taste of their tea. She discovered that the cook was using the same pot for washing, soup, tea and several other tasks. She bought a large pot with Sanitary Commission money and designated it only for tea and they all remarked how much better the tea was...

I also think that while the army had written specs as to what low-diet was, the availability, even in general hospitals varied a great deal. You would get soup, but you might get the same soup every meal for months and months. Again, will get you references on a story of a field hospital south of Vicksburg where they were literally refusing food rather than eat the bean soup one more time.

But I digress -- will get you references for the above later this week and apologize again for the unfortunate previous post,
Karin Timour
Period Knitting -- Socks, Camp Hats, Balaclavas
Atlantic Guard Soldiers' Aid Society
Email: Ktimour@aol.com

[Dale Beasley]

Re: Effects of diet on soldiers?

Karen,

I have a good friend in VIcksburg, his name is Gordon Cotton, written I think 9 books now on ACW...he runs the Court House Museum there in Vicksburg. I am sure that he may have information that could help you.....I do know that the Sisters of Mercy had a Hospital there.....give him a try....

[Nifty50]

Re: Effects of diet on soldiers?

Madam Timour:

Thank you for your response to my post. If you come across the sources please let me know, either here or AC Forum private message, or straight to my email address.

As an old college English instructor once said in our class- "If I am not learning, then I am not teaching".

[hiplainsyank]

Re: Effects of diet on soldiers?

There's a story from Luke 14 in which Jesus heals a man with "dropsy". In preaching on that text and the verses around it a couple days ago, I learned that dropsy is what is now called edema, or swelling marked also by unquenchable thirst, normally caused either by congestive heart failure or kidney disease.

I do think that while they had more heavy animal fats, people also had MUCH less sugar and more whole grains overall. For example, even for me, relatively young (34), Halloween trick-or-treating when I was little was a treat because we didn't get to eat candy like that all the time, and pop was something you got some at pay day rather than an every day necessity. If you look at ingredients lists, sugar or corn syrup is a major ingredient to much of what you buy on grocery store shelves. And so much of grains, and fruits even, are so processed as to make them just slightly better than eating pure sugar.

And while I'm not doing a low carb diet, science has shown that combining those sorts of bad carbs with bad fats makes for bigger trouble than just having the bad fats alone.

SO in many ways people then did eat better, even with all the animal products they ate, that most Americans do today.

BTW, carrots are another root crop that can store well, and can be kept in the ground with some protection after it turns cold.

[billwatson]

Just to round things off...

... there's new research into what does cause heart attacks, and it's pretty interesting. Heart disease is something that is common to modern societies, but not to societies where the diet is, even today, as poor as what we think soldiers had. Abdominal fat and stress -- chronic, daily stress-- are two key causes and netiher, despite the prospect of battle as a stress-inducer, seems to have been anything Civil War soldiers had a problem with.

Here's a link to the research, but it may not last too long.

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-17/1093840353144140.xml

If it fades, a keyword search for "Dr. Salim Yousef" will probably take you to the same information. He headed up the study, which was very widely based in terms of information gathering. Since it covers conditions in places where diet is somewhat similar to that of our Civil War ancestors, I thought it might be especially relevant.

[Hank Trent]

Re: Just to round things off...

Abdominal fat and stress -- chronic, daily stress-- are two key causes and netiher, despite the prospect of battle as a stress-inducer, seems to have been anything Civil War soldiers had a problem with.

Abdominal fat, yes, but I'm not sure I follow you on the part about stress. You're saying "chronic, daily stress" wasn't a part of people's live in the 1860s compared to today?

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[billwatson]

Re: Just to round things off...

Abdominal fat, yes, but I'm not sure I follow you on the part about stress. You're saying "chronic, daily stress" wasn't a part of people's live in the 1860s compared to today?

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

Not a part to the extent that is part of our lives. I think the incredible, relentless and ever-accelerating pace of change, in society, technology and everything else, is unlike anything any of our ancestors ever had to endure. I think it creates stress levels unprecedented in human evolution. I'm not saying there wasn't stress, and sometimes a lot of it, I'm just saying that in this millennium we have more people dealing with more stress at a higher level than ever before.

Or maybe it's just me. :-)

[Hank Trent]

Re: Just to round things off...

Not a part to the extent that is part of our lives. I think the incredible, relentless and ever-accelerating pace of change, in society, technology and everything else, is unlike anything any of our ancestors ever had to endure. I think it creates stress levels unprecedented in human evolution. I'm not saying there wasn't stress, and sometimes a lot of it, I'm just saying that in this millennium we have more people dealing with more stress at a higher level than ever before.

Funny, because that's exactly what people were saying in the 1860s. Railroads and telegraphs made overland travel easy and communication instantaneous, for the first time ever. The industrial revolution reshaped life with each new invention, from sewing machines to mower-reapers, each of which either made people change the way they'd always done things, or work harder doing it the old way to compete with the new way.

I just looked up the following article to post on another topic. Titled "Mothers, Spare Yourself," it's from the collection Home Memories, 1858:

In the staid and quiet times of sixty, eight, or one hundred years ago, the mother had sufficient care, and labor, and anxiety in conducting and governing her household... In those days, mothers had sufficient care and labor; they were sometimes overtasked even then, and pressed into a premature grave. How must it be now?... Care, and exciting effort are demanded of the mother in four-fold proportion. The imperious voice of fashion and custom has given to the machinery of domestic life, a hurry and intensity of action, which are injurious in all its relations, but which wears most fearfully on the main-spring...

What is the remedy for this evil?... It is old-fashioned, perhaps stale, but we are looking back to the old paths, and trying to profit by the example of our ancestors. This is the maxim: Do not undertake too much. This is a great fault of the age. If others try to do everything, mothers must not. They live too intensely... The fashions and customs of the times are like a rushing torrent, against which there is no standing.

In Walden, Henry David Thoreau described the new faster pace he noticed in men's lives after the coming of the railroad:

Have not men improved somewhat in punctuality since the railroad was invented? Do they not talk and think faster in the depot than they did in the stage-office? There is something electrifying in the atmosphere of the former place. I have been astonished at the miracles it has wrought; that some of my neighbors, who, I should have prophesied, once for all, would never get to Boston by so prompt a conveyance, are on hand when the bell rings. To do things "railroad fashion" is now the byword; and it is worth the while to be warned so often and so sincerely by any power to get off its track. There is no stopping to read the riot act, no firing over the heads of the mob, in this case. We have constructed a fate, an Atropos, that never turns aside.

An article in the 1862 USDA annual report by Dr. W. W. Hall on the "Health of Farmers' Families," mentions some of the pressures that farmers faced:

...that grim specter DEBT, which is voluntarily set up in the households of three farmers out of four... it eats out half the joys of many families by reason of the self-denials, the always losing 'make-shifts,' the working to disadvantage and consequent extra labor, with those anxieties and solicitudes which are necessarily imposed, and which, in their turn, induce irritation of mind, irascibility of temper...

He discusses the specific "Hardships of Farmers' Wives," and some of the symptoms of what we'd call stress that they may show:

There is an inability to speak for a moment or a month, the heart seems to "jump up in the mouth," or there is a terrible feeling of impending suffociation. At other times there are actual convulsions, or an uncontrollable bursting out into tears.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[hireddutchcutthroat]

Re: Just to round things off...

Not a part to the extent that is part of our lives. I think the incredible, relentless and ever-accelerating pace of change, in society, technology and everything else, is unlike anything any of our ancestors ever had to endure. I think it creates stress levels unprecedented in human evolution. I'm not saying there wasn't stress, and sometimes a lot of it, I'm just saying that in this millennium we have more people dealing with more stress at a higher level than ever before.

Or maybe it's just me. :-)

This reminds me of my old forman. One day a guy scrapped a bunch of parts and said it was because he was "stressed out" my formans reply was; (He was in the Danish resistance in WW2) "STRESS! Stress is when you are hiding under the floorboards with a pair Germans boots inches above your face! Let me tell you about stress!"

Sorry this is not WBTS, but it changed the way I look at my day to day "stress".

MODs nuke this if you need to.

[billwatson]

Re: Just to round things off...

"Not a part to the extent that is part of our lives. I think the incredible, relentless and ever-accelerating pace of change, in society, technology and everything else, is unlike anything any of our ancestors ever had to endure. I think it creates stress levels unprecedented in human evolution. I'm not saying there wasn't stress, and sometimes a lot of it, I'm just saying that in this millennium we have more people dealing with more stress at a higher level than ever before." Bill Watson


Funny, because that's exactly what people were saying in the 1860s. Railroads and telegraphs made overland travel easy and communication instantaneous, for the first time ever. The industrial revolution reshaped life with each new invention, from sewing machines to mower-reapers, each of which either made people change the way they'd always done things, or work harder doing it the old way to compete with the new way." -- Hank Trent

Let me note that neither assertion is incompatible with the other.

I think it also needs to be noted that whether the average person finds life more or less stressful is probably a combination of factors, including how well a particular society has ... folkways? traditions? ... that allow for the appropriate decompression of stress. It's pretty safe to say that the Irish who rioted in New York in 1863 were stressed economically, stressed culturally and had no vent, for instance. Kind of like a societal heart attack.

It seems like societies with technological change report more stress (and, for purposes of this discussion, more of the chronic, relentless stress identified in the study I cited on heart attack causes) than do societies where technological change is not as profound. It could be that neither our bodies nor our cultures have universally adapted to those particular conditions, and that this has always been true.

So, who wants to do the stressed-out 186x bankrupt farmer turned factory worker competing with a former slave for a job at the next event?