| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Intensely Human: The Health of the Black Soldier in the American Civil War. By Margaret Humphreys. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. xxii, 197 pp. $40.00, ISBN 978-0-8018-8696-6.)
Margaret Humphreys's study of the health of black soldiers during the Civil War covers much ground. Drawing on the work of other scholars, Humphreys examines "new" archival materials through the lens of Northern physicians, particularly the Massachusetts physician Ira Russell, "to deepen our understanding" of their "view of the black body, of its strengths and weaknesses" (p. xi). More broadly, Humphreys discusses how ideas about race, gender, and citizenship interconnected with the use of science in the treatment of black Civil War soldiers.	1
By closely examining particular regions where black troops were stationed, Humphreys adds great insight into the incredibly high death rate due to disease. The statistics remain startling. Of the approximately 180,000 black men in the Union army, 33,000 died, 29,000 from disease, most of which was preventable even by contemporary standards. Unwilling to leave us with general explanations of medical neglect, Humphreys seeks to explain causes of black soldiers' deaths by disease through current medical understanding of epidemiological factors and takes "seriously the possibility that health disparities among black and white troops might in part have depended on biological differences" (p. xii). She explores this highly controversial question, she notes, "with an open mind" (ibid.).	. . .

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