THE PHENOMENA OF DEATH IN BATTLE. 199 



ported by Surgeon Thomas B. Read, was the corpse of a Union 

 soldier with his right arm raised above his head and rigidly fixed, 

 his hand still holding the cap with which he had been cheering on 

 his comrades. 



Aside from the desperate nature of the fighting at Antietam, 

 the situation was especially favorable to these phenomena, par- 

 ticularly on the Confederate side. They had fought nine battles 

 and engagements within one month, besides marching over two 

 hundred miles. The troops engaged on the portions of the field 

 under consideration had fought at South Mountain two days be- 

 fore — September 14th — had been alert all night on the 14th, loth, 

 and 16th, marching, countermarching, and skirmishing constant- 

 ly, and were run down physically from hunger and general ex- 

 haustion. They had subsisted for several days upon green corn 

 and apples, and had been one month on half rations of meal and 

 bacon. The day — September 17th — was about like sultry August 

 weather in the North, close and lowery in the morning, followed 

 by a burning sun. The night of the battle was sweltering hot on 

 the field. These circumstances may have played a part in the de- 

 velopment of instantaneous rigor. 



The first cases that came to the eye of Dr. Brinton were at 

 Belmont, Mo., November 7, 1861. One was a Union soldier kneel- 

 ing by a tree, in the act of firing, and shot obliquely through the 

 head, front to back. His warm body rested on right knee and 

 leg, left leg bent, with foot on the ground ; the left hand firmly 

 clinched the barrel of his musket, which rested with the butt on 

 the ground. The soldier's head drooped to the chest, and rested 

 against the tree. Attitude generally forward, jaw fixed, rigidity 

 perfect. The doctor supposed him to be alive, and could scarcely 

 believe that death rested upon a statue so lifelike. Another Union 

 soldier, shot near the heart, mounted a straying mule and rode 

 beside the doctor some distance. Soon the glazed eyeballs gave 

 unequivocal signs of death, but the body rode on upright. After 

 a time the mule was needed for a live victim, and the body of the 

 other was so firm and rigid that it required force to loosen the 

 knee-grip on the animal's shoulders. 



Belmont was fought in autumn, yet the physical activity was 

 such as to generate great bodily heat. It was a running fight for 

 seven hours through wood and marsh. The desperate nature of 

 the struggle is shown by the list of casualties. On the average 

 during the war the proportion of killed and mortally wounded to 

 wounded was one to three. In four of the five regiments engaged 

 at Belmont the proportion was over one to two. The Seventh Iowa 

 lost 188 killed, wounded, and missing. The death-list reached 74, 

 leaving 114 for surviving wounded — over one and a quarter to two. 



At Williamsburg, Va., May 0, 1862, Surgeon Read reported a 



