I apologize if this sound hokey.
I was reading the book The Bloody Crucible of Courage: Fighting Methods and Combat Experience of the Civil War by Brent Nosworthey, and I found it interesting how you can tell if a bloating corpse would be federal or confederate by the tone of their skin.
…Three days after the fighting, many of the corpses started to bloat and discolor. Jacob Roemer, who walked over the field, claimed he could distinguish a rebel from a Union soldier by the color of the skin. The confederate dead by this point were all swollen and black, while the skin of those on the union side remained white. Roemer attributed this to the lack of salt in the Confederates’ diet. Edward Moore, who fought under Stonewall Jackson, remembers seeing exactly the opposite after the First Bull Run. Here Moore claims it was the union soldiers who were swollen and blacked, while the rebels remained white! Once again, he reasoned that the difference lay in the diet of those in the opposing armies. (page 229)
Has anyone ever heard of salt affecting the color bloating bodies? I would imagine there would be some cyanosis. Time to look at some images….
Grant Wilson
P.S. Mark Jaeger, thanks for the book…
I was reading the book The Bloody Crucible of Courage: Fighting Methods and Combat Experience of the Civil War by Brent Nosworthey, and I found it interesting how you can tell if a bloating corpse would be federal or confederate by the tone of their skin.
…Three days after the fighting, many of the corpses started to bloat and discolor. Jacob Roemer, who walked over the field, claimed he could distinguish a rebel from a Union soldier by the color of the skin. The confederate dead by this point were all swollen and black, while the skin of those on the union side remained white. Roemer attributed this to the lack of salt in the Confederates’ diet. Edward Moore, who fought under Stonewall Jackson, remembers seeing exactly the opposite after the First Bull Run. Here Moore claims it was the union soldiers who were swollen and blacked, while the rebels remained white! Once again, he reasoned that the difference lay in the diet of those in the opposing armies. (page 229)
Has anyone ever heard of salt affecting the color bloating bodies? I would imagine there would be some cyanosis. Time to look at some images….
Grant Wilson
P.S. Mark Jaeger, thanks for the book…
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