Today’s Hopelessly Unsuccessful Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
An account of the death of Private James M. Daniel during the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War, 1863:
Private James M. Daniel
Company I, 27th Pennsylvania Infantry
1st Brigade, 2nd Division, 11th Corps
It was about noon on July 1 when the 27th formed a line of battle below Cemetery Hill and pushed forward northward to support the First Corps who, on their left, were fighting west of Gettysburg. The regiment became engaged almost immediately and after losing about fourteen men killed or mortally wounded, and being greatly outnumbered, it retreated back to cemetery Hill. The confusion was terrible. Confederates were everywhere, and many Union soldiers became separated from their units, some to remain missing forever. One of these unfortunate cases was that of Private Daniel. His body when located, was presumably impossible to identify. Many advertisements were placed in local newspapers to aid in the search for lost sons, fathers, husbands or brothers. the following notice, typical of the day, was placed in one of the Gettysburg papers on October, 1, 1863, indicating the fact that,
a long personal search on the part of friends had been at length abandoned as hopelessly unsuccessful. Any person giving information of the grave of James M. Daniel, Twenty seventh regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers, will confer a great favor on an afflicted family in Philadelphia. Address, Rev. Thomas F. McClure, Oakland Mills, Juniata County, Pa.
Daniel’s military service record does not give any other particulars as to the final disposition of his corpse, or a clue to what happened to him, except that he was “killed in action.” It can be assumed that he was hurriedly and impersonally buried by the rebels in an unmarked grave, somewhere on the confused and wrecked battleground of July 1.
Battle of Cemetery Hill, July 2, 1863.
Culled from: Killed In Action: Eyewitness Accounts of the Last Moments of 100 Union Soldiers Who Died at Gettysburg
Idiot (in a clinical sense) Du Jour!
From his 1908 (reprinted in 1949) book Mental Deficiency, here’s a case study of “Apathetic and Excitable Idiocy” from A.F. Tredgold:
A.D.P., female. Has been in the institution since childhood, but the family history is not obtainable, as there are no friends living. On admission she was unable to dress or feed herself, and had no apparent understanding of anything said to her. She showed no curiosity, no imitativeness, and no power of attention. Her habits were unclean, and she was constantly dribbling from her mouth. She was a voracious eater. Though unable to speak, she was addicted to violent yells, often interspersed with a peculiar sound like the braying of a donkey. She was at times exceedingly violent, kicking, biting, and scratching the nurses and other patients indiscriminately, and, in fact, was generally a source of endless trouble to the whole ward. She remained in practically the same condition until thirty-five years of age, when she had an epileptic attack. From this time until her death she was subject to occasional recurrences of the fits, and she died at the age of thirty-six of gangrene of the lung, resulting from the aspiration of a small portion of food. The cranial circumference was 20 inches, and there were numerous developmental anomalies.
On making a post-mortem examination, I found a very thick, dense skull with an absence of diploe. The brain was small… but, beyond being very simply convoluted, there were no naked-eye anomalies. Microscopical examination, however, revealed extensive imperfections of the cells of both brain and spinal cord.
Was still able to vote Republican. Was considering running for office at time of death.