“Crowded and Very Sickly”

Continental troops at Valley Forge suffered from putrid fever, the itch, diarrhea, dysentery, and rheumatism, while the Hospital Department inoculated two to three thousand against smallpox. Medicine, food, blankets, and even straw for bedding were in short supply, and orders called for all kinds of dirt and filth to be burned or buried. In May, General Orders requested that mud plaster be removed, huts made as airy as possible, and the powder of a musket cartridge burned in each hut daily to purify the air. As filth and offal accumulated in and around the huts, the number of sick increased, prompting Washington to continually issue cleanup orders amid intolerable smells caused by the want of necessaries or the neglect of them. On June 10 the army moved from huts to tents. In camp, brigade hospitals treated the less seriously ill and those recovering from smallpox inoculation, and when these flying hospitals overflowed, meeting houses and barns within a few miles of camp were pressed into service. The seriously ill were moved to general hospitals at Yellow Springs, Bethlehem, Lititz, Reading, and Ephrata.

Chesterbrook, Pennsylvania · United States