Angel’s Glow: The Bacterium That Saved Civil War Soldiers

[jgoodguy]

Angel’s Glow: The Bacterium That Saved Civil War Soldiers

As the sun went down after the 1862 Battle of Shiloh during the Civil War, some soldiers noticed that their wounds were glowing a faint blue. Many men waited on the rainy, muddy Tennessee battlefield for two days that April, until medics could treat them. Once they were taken to field hospitals, the troops with glowing wounds were more likely to survive their injuries — and to get better faster. Thus the mysterious blue light was dubbed “Angel’s Glow.”
Nice, but finding a period article about the glow escapes me at the moment.
 

huskerblitz said:

Apparently you're not the only one that can't seem to find period documentation. All I can find is reports came from 'oral reports' of soldiers.

https://freedmenspatrol.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/nothing-on-glowing-wounds-at-shiloh/
from above link

Past posts on this subject: The Strange Tale of Glowing Soldiers, A Tiny Update on Glowing Soldiers

My inquiries on period sources for the story that some soldiers at Shiloh had glowing wounds, attributed to a possible infection by bio-luminescent bacteria, have hit a dead end. I found nothing in the Official Records. The author of the Mental Floss piece on the story had the science, but had not checked contemporary accounts. (I don’t mean that as a criticism, by the way. There’s nothing wrong with focusing on one aspect of the story instead of another and the science is interesting in itself.) I used the web contact form and emailed the Shiloh National Military Park.

They got back to me today and have not been able to find any contemporary source. If anybody ought to know, they ought to know. A phenomenon so conspicuous and unusual would generate at least some paper trail which should to have survived, but one proves elusive. A key part of the story, at least to me, is that the soldiers with the glowing wounds had a better survival rate than those without. That fits the science, but also implies at least an informal study of outcomes.

Some text could appear tomorrow and show otherwise, but this story looks more like folklore that grew up afterward than memories of actual events.

Or even made up in modern times for a slow news day.
O' Be Joyful said

Also http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/articles/article/angel-glow/

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/articles/article/angel-glow/

 

[5fish]

I tried to find another battle in the civil war where the glow was mention but could not find one... Tells how the nematoda does his business...


Recent studies have discovered that parasitic worms, called nematodes, carry a glowing bacteria named Photorhabdus luminescens, or P. luminescens. P. luminescens is used by the nematode to kill their host (which includes plants, burrowing larva, or open flesh), and any surrounding microorganisms. Nematodes usually cannot survive the heat of the human body, however the soldiers’ body temperatures were lowered from laying out in the cold, creating the perfect environment for the worms to thrive. Routinely, the nematode vomits the glowing bacteria into the wound upon entry, a process which kills their other microscopic hosts. In this instance, P. luminescens instead kills off all other bacteria in the wound, staying on the surface for some time. Naturally, the human body does not stay cold forever and upon reheating after rescue, the parasites die shortly after. The soldiers with “Angel’s Glow” had a greater chance of surviving owing to Photorhabdus luminescens and most experienced a quick and healthy recovery, all from the elimination of infection-causing bacteria in the wounds.

Link: http://www.civilwarmed.org/parasites/