Six Civil War Medical Myths That Just Won't Die-- Part 4: Glowing Wounds at Shiloh?

MYTH  #4

At Shiloh, wounds were reported to glow -- which was supposedly cause by bacteria Photorhabdus luminescens.

There are many google search results relating to this story "discovered" by high school students.  They claim to have visited Shiloh National Military Park where they heard a story about glowing wounds.  They, in turn, claim that they have discovered the bacteria responsible for those glowing wounds.

According to a NPS Ranger there:  "The only problem with this story is that there is no historical documentation of the event [glowing wounds] ever occurring, at Shiloh or anywhere else.  Not a single letter, diary entry, newspaper account, soldier's journal, , official report... nothing."

So, no known contemporary primary or secondary source accounts of glowing wounds -- and, the bacteria requires a temperature below 93.4 degrees.  That's well below  the normal temperature of a living human body.

--Old SeceshGlow