Hello John, and first, thanks for your service to our country. I'm currently doing biographies of the Camp Chase dead. In which these three soldiers died. My Confederate ancestor also died at Camp Chase during the war but has nothing to do with these posts.

Insofar as the correct definition for diseases I would agree with you. Some of the 19th century definitions were quite different than they are today. I set up some guidelines while doing the biographies. Starting off there are no references that are absolutely correct even concerning the death dates or reason for deaths at Chase.

What I decided to do was to use the Camp Chase death records as made by General Ainsworth and his staff at the turn of the century. They are if you will Federal POW Records. In my opinion they are overall more accurate than some other sources. So when I list a reason for death it was taken from these records. Other sources may disagree with the reasons for death but in my opinion I decided to use the earliest primary source.

From my experience in dealing with the deaths at Camp Chase typhoid fever probably came in 3rd or 4th as the overall reasons for death at Chase. Pneumonia seems to have been the leading cause followed by small-pox. It appears many of the typhoid fever victims at Chase may have gotten the disease from bad drinking water.

Camp Chase was perhaps one of the worst prison camps in the North insofar as drinking water. At times the Camp Chase prison was larger than the population of Columbus, Ohio located four miles away. Camp Chase was built over a low lying area and the sinks would constantly contaminate the drinking water especially during the rain season. Ironically one of the better northern prisons concerning good drinking water was the Elmira Prison located in Sullivan County, New York. However many of the Confederates referred to Elmira as Hell-mira.