The diseases and deaths of soldiers in the Polish and Lithuanian armies in the 17th c.

Abstract

Soldiers, due to their profession, often risk sudden death. Attitudes to death is conditioned, among other factors, by the psychology of the battlefield. It is nowadays assumed that with the development of modern weapons and the resultant distancing from and lack of eye contact with the enemy, death has become abstract and psychologically more neutral. In the 17th c., due to the use of cold steel, and of guns less effective than today, killing a man was certainly emotionally more diffi cult. Since armies were professional, men enlisted mostly of their own choice and they treated killing the enemy as their duty. Traumatic experiences affected sensitivities; death was viewed as part of professional risk and treated as a natural consequence of war. For the 17th c. it is very difficult to estimate losses in men due to combat, poor living con-ditions or deceases. Due to unstable terminology, it is also usually impossible to identify illnesses that led to soldiers’ dying — nosology was only starting to develop together with clinical medicine. Soldiers were endangered by exposure to changing and harsh weather; especially frost and cold rain brought not only discomfort but also health problems. Starving also lead to tragic consequences. In the Polish and Lithuanian armies death of starvation was not considered as highly worrying in the case of infantry or dragoons; the situation was judged as alarming only when starvation started to affect cavalry. Most tragic situations happened when food and water supplies ran out in besieged cities and strongholds. It was often assumed that high mortality during wars was unavoidable. In comparison to other casualty causes, battles did not result in high numbers of deaths, but they produced many wounded. The most common types of wounds were cuts, punctures, gunshots, bruises and lacerations (e.g. caused by horse bite). Wounds often led to dangerous complications, e.g. haemorrhages, shivering fits, fever, pain, erysipelas, gangrene and tetanus. Furthermore, soldiers often suffered from burns and broken limbs. Gunshot wounds and other injures to limbs were usually not fatal, since surgeons knew how to deal with them, but often left soldiers unfi t for service. Serious complications occurred as a result of haemorrhages and internal organ injuries. Large rounded musket bullets caused extensive tissue damage around the entry and exit wounds, for which surgeons had no remedy, so it lead to a quick death; the same applied to chest and abdominal puncture wounds. Seemingly less serious wounds could also prove fatal if they were not properly dressed.  More casualties were due to infectious diseases. The most widespread one was typhus fever, resulting from the lack of hygiene, especially during campaigns. Another dangerous disease was typhoid, causing long suffering, especially if there were complications, and many deaths. The lack of hygiene often led to dysentery; war went hand in hand with the bubonic plague in all historical epochs, as noted by both contemporaries and later historians. Due tomalnutrition and bad clothing soldiers often suffered from skin infections and frostbite. The health of Polish and Lithuanian soldiers in the 17th c. is difficult to assess since historians qualify this period as a pre-statistical one. Is the topic of death and disease in the seventeenth-century Polish and Lithuanian armies properly researched? Are descriptive and scattered archival sources sufficient? It seems that a lot of data can be contributed by archeologists and anthropologists. Historians should certainly seek their cooperation to broaden the knowledge derived from written sources.