Soldiers have always worked. And, like others engaged in “high-risk” occupations (e.g., hard rock miners, oil derrick operators, medical care workers), they routinely get hurt on the job. This was certainly the case during the American Civil War (1861 – 65), which until the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic held the dubious distinction of being the deadliest event in US history. Underpaid and often treated with disregard by higher-ups, the average infantryman faced a host of workplace hazards, from poor rations and inadequate sanitation to rampant disease and enemy munitions. Although historians and popular writers have made a cottage industry of detailing the Civil War's production of injury—in all its “patriot gore,” to borrow Edmund Wilson's phrase—relatively few devote much energy exploring what happened to the hundreds of thousands of disabled vets who survived the conflict. Those who do tend to share the public's fascination with the most spectacular forms of war...
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