Although I think it's a bit ridiculous to fight because of cold medicine, it's not so difficult to understand when you think about it.

You must know that this is the sixties of the nineteenth century, although the scientific and technological level of Western society has been at the forefront of the world, but limited by the overall level of development, Western medicine has not really reached the point of crushing, has not completely transformed into a more scientific modern medicine, and even in many places is not as good as traditional Chinese medicine.

Then, in this period, once one or more can treat stubborn diseases, especially when the treatment of diseases that are fatal in the eyes of ordinary people, the value of these drugs is much greater, so big that you can pay for it, which is why the modern drugs that Li Yongji got can be sold here, and even become China's largest export materials.

Different from what modern people imagine, in this era, whether it is in the West or the East, diseases like cancer are not afraid, the reason is that the incidence of these diseases is too low, so even if they can kill, because of the small base, everyone is not very afraid, and the mortality rate of diseases such as cancer may not be as high as the mortality rate caused by war, hunger and murder.

On the contrary, common diseases such as colds, fevers, and tuberculosis, especially the highly contagious diseases such as influenza and plague, are the diseases that everyone is most afraid of, because in the absence of specific medicines, if one accidentally gets it, he can only rely on his own body to resist, and if he can't resist it, it will be a death.

However, under normal circumstances, diseases such as colds and fevers can be cured by themselves, that is, they can be carried by their own bodies, so everyone is not too afraid, but infectious diseases, because the infection rate is high and the incidence is fast. The mortality rate is not low, so it is all something that everyone talks about, and even everyone's fear of infectious diseases is more fearful than being killed on the battlefield.

Then, because of the fear of infectious diseases, it is not so unreasonable to attack yourself who has a special medicine.

However, this incident also made Li Yongji really pay attention to it, because although he had not heard of any large-scale infectious diseases during the American Civil War in the history books of another time and space. But the plane has clearly changed, so it doesn't seem so incomprehensible in case some deadly infectious disease emerges, such as the flu virus.

Unlike what Burnside and others thought, Li Yongji knew that the flu virus was a really deadly thing, especially in this era, so after he figured it out, he ordered his soldiers to withdraw as soon as he could. And do a good job of protection, send people to isolate all these American prisoners first.

At the same time, while Li Yongji carried out large-scale internal inspections, he also began to examine American prisoners. to understand the flu situation in the US military.

However, due to the lack of sufficient modern monitoring equipment and means, Li Yongji is still unable to determine whether everyone has the flu, and can only roughly know how many people have coughs. How many people have a fever, how many have a sore throat, in short, we can only know how many people have developed cold-like symptoms.

After five consecutive days of mass quarantine inspections. Not only did Li Yongji understand the casualties of each other in this battle, but also figured out how many people had developed diseases similar to cold symptoms.

After preliminary examination, the expeditionary force itself has not been infected on a large scale at present, and as for those US prisoners with a total number of 130,000, more than 5,000 have symptoms of cold.

Out of prudence, on the one hand, Li Yongji separated the expeditionary force from the US prisoners, and set aside a separate barracks to detain the US prisoners to strictly prevent the invasion of the flu virus; On the other hand, in order to curb the spread of influenza, a special quarantine area has been set up, and all people who are found to have cold and fever symptoms are sent to the quarantine area for observation and strict monitoring.

At the same time, Li Yongji also took out a large number of anti-cold medicines, and also sent professional accompanying military doctors to the isolation area to take care of patients, and also carried out strict requirements in terms of hygiene, plus provided nutritious meals for patients, so as long as they are not too sick, they should be able to withstand this wave of flu.

In fact, a disease like influenza has a very low fatality rate in modern times, generally speaking, even if you don't take medicine, as long as you get enough rest, maintain good hygiene, and keep up with your diet and nutrition, you can basically heal yourself, and it is not stronger than other cold symptoms, but it is more violent than the general cold.

Most of the deaths due to influenza are basically caused by complications, such as not getting good rest and treatment, deteriorating into pneumonia and death, or death due to high fever.

In the case of the New Virginia Legion, after Li Yongji's many understandings, it was preliminarily concluded that it was due to the sudden cooling of the weather and the lack of good rest and treatment.

You must know that before this sudden snowstorm, the temperature near Smithland was around minus ten degrees Celsius, although it was relatively cold, but it was not unpleasantly cold.

As a result, a sudden cooling and snowstorm caused the temperature in the vicinity to drop to minus 20 degrees Celsius, and the cooling range was as high as 30 degrees Celsius, which happened almost overnight.

To put it bluntly, this is because the temperature difference drops too much, the body's resistance suddenly decreases, and then it can't resist the viral infection, so the influenza virus takes advantage of the weakness, in essence, it is just a typhoid cold.

It's just that because of the large number of US troops, they gathered together, the sanitary conditions during the march were not good, and the diet and nutrition could not keep up, so that a large number of colds were prevalent, and then because they did not understand the pathogenesis, they caused unnecessary panic.

Therefore, if this American army is just for self-protection, in fact, there is no need to go back to war with the Chinese and seize any special medicine, they only need to return to the safety of Evansville, cultivate well, basically most people can heal themselves.

Therefore, this group of Americans is purely scaring themselves, and the fundamental reason is that they do not understand what this disease is all about, and they link the flu with the plague.

In fact, it is not to blame Americans for not understanding that in this era, except for the Chinese medical industry that is popularizing basic medical knowledge, people from any other country are not guilty. They all know very little about colds and whatever. After all, this is an era when microbiology has not even appeared, and the gooseneck test has not yet been widely known, so it is very normal to not understand the cold, and to think that it is the same thing as the plague with a high mortality rate.

If you look at the history of diseases in this era, especially the history of infectious diseases, due to the lack of effective statistics, most of them are actually based on false rumors, the kind of infectious diseases with a really high mortality rate. Very few.

In the case of this flu, in most cases, even if there is a small-scale infection in one place, because most of them are towns and can be fully cultivated, there are very few real deaths, and as for the barracks, this may have happened in the past, but because the soldiers' physique is better. Therefore, it is even more difficult to have a large-scale influenza epidemic in the barracks.

But this time, perhaps because the temperature dropped sharply, this US army was not prepared for the cold before. In addition, after a long period of marching, the body is very tired, and the blizzard wind is strong, which leads to a large number of people getting influenza. But as long as it can be treated correctly, the mortality rate is still not high, and everyone is just panicking because they are afraid.

Opposite. For the Chinese Expeditionary Force, although it has also experienced a sudden cooling process, because of the timely response and a large number of cold materials, even if someone is sick, they can be isolated, treated and rested in time, so there is no large-scale flu.

This thing, the key is prevention, if you accidentally get it, the key is isolation and rest, as long as you do good isolation and sufficient rest, relax mentally, don't scare yourself, basically there is no big problem.

After understanding this, firstly, it was out of the desire to stabilize the hearts of these captives and not to make trouble for themselves, and secondly, for propaganda purposes, to package his invading army as a benevolent and righteous army, so as to reduce unnecessary resistance and trouble for future attacks, so Li Yongji promised Burnside that he would provide treatment to all the sick American prisoners.

Specifically, for those who have mild disease, it is just to give them enough rest and take a few super cheap tablets of vitamin C, of course, these vitamin C will not tell them the truth, but tell them that they are expensive special drugs.

Vitamin C, modern society is a few yuan a bottle of things, although it can't be said to be useless for colds, but the real effect is very limited, to put it bluntly, it's just a placebo.

But not to mention, when those American GIs saw the Chinese military doctors wearing masks and latex gloves, and carefully taking out the vitamin C from the beautiful plastic bottles that looked tall at first glance, they were very excited, and they no longer worried about their illness.

For those patients with severe colds, that is, those who have turned into bacterial infections or even pneumonia, Li Yongji provides symptomatic anti-inflammatory antibiotics.

The cold virus of this era is still very primitive, and it doesn't use any cephalosporin or the like, just use the cheapest amoxicillin plus aspirin to treat it, and even sulfonamides combined with aspirin can also treat these diseases.

At the same time, Li Yongji also sent a Chinese medical team escorted by an infantry battalion, led by a small team of American troops, with a letter from Burnside, to find the abandoned American infected people, in order to take the abandoned people and treat them symptomatically.

Not to mention, after such an act, the 130,000 American prisoners quickly stabilized, even if due to the heavy casualties, many people still hate the Chinese, but at least there will be no riots.

After these arrangements were completed, Li Yongji had the time to review the casualty statistics that had just been sent, and after reading the casualty statistics, Li Yongji expected it, and he was also embarrassed.

According to detailed statistics over the past few days, preliminarily, in the Second Smithland Defensive Battle, commonly known as the Seven-Day Bloody Battle, the side had three motorized reinforced regiments, plus the combined defense force of the officers and men of the task force, and suffered a total of more than 2,300 casualties, of which 106 were killed and 2,218 were wounded.

Among the dead, most of them were soldiers defending the port, many of them were killed in the sneak attack of the US army in a hurry, and the other part occurred in the later counterattack operations, but the soldiers in the three frontal fronts with the greatest pressure were not many, even if they hid in the support point fortress, not many people died, which fully illustrates the superiority and importance of the defense of the support point.

Among the injured, most of them were lightly wounded, including the disabled seriously wounded soldiers, a total of only 300 people, and because of good rescue measures, the seriously injured were basically able to save their lives.

On the surface, the number of casualties is actually not large, considering that the three reinforced regiments of the Dream Division of the Expeditionary Force, plus the naval officers and men of the task force, are only less than 25,000 in total, so the casualties are more than 2,000 people, accounting for only one-tenth of the total number of this force!

One-tenth of the casualties are still acceptable for the army of this era, especially the few direct casualties in it, however, this is already an extremely heavy loss for the completely modernized and equipped troops, not only the largest loss since the establishment of the Dream Division, but also the largest casualty since the battle led by Li Yongji.

Compared with these not large casualties, the consumption of arms and materials is relatively large, and after such a battle, although Zhang Xinda's side has not yet come out with specific figures, Li Yongji has spent at least 300 million yuan on modern munitions, most of which are ammunition consumption, especially all kinds of artillery shells, and other weapons such as temporary purchases, such as tracked armored vehicles, snow vehicle modification fees, etc., are also expensive.

Therefore, this battle, which is really a cannon sound, gold 10,000 taels, is a very expensive battle, Li Yongji's previous single battles, never consumed so much ammunition like this battle, even when attacking New Orleans and annihilating the Grant Army, he did not spend so much money and consume so much ammunition.

Li Yongji began to search for land in New Orleans from the beginning of his construction, during which he purchased grain and vegetables, seafood and river fresh, and even bought and sold local precious metals such as silver and gold.

Therefore, after such a battle, it can be said that all the money that Li Yongji had made in the southern part of the United States has been spent, and it may not even be enough, purely from the perspective of short-term profits, it is a loss-making business.

However, this is not the case, and in the long run, Li Yongji still earns money.

Let's not mention that the US prisoners captured before are already counted as cheap laborers, let's just talk about this battle, which also caught a lot of prisoners.

According to statistics, the New Virginia Legion had a total of 300,000 people, of which in the seven-day battle, a total of 170,000 were killed and wounded, and the remaining 130,000 were all surrendered as prisoners.

Of the 170,000 casualties of the New Virginia Legion, 60,000 were killed, 80,000 were seriously wounded, and the rest were lightly wounded and could not immediately enter the battle.

In other words, in just such a battle, the casualty rate of the US army is more than half, and the casualty rate is more than one-fifth, not to mention the cruel modern war, even in this era, such a high casualty rate is very rare.

Therefore, purely from the comparison of casualties, although the casualties of the expeditionary force are not small, but in terms of the results achieved, it is enough to be proud, and it can be said that it is a decisive victory!

What Li Yongji didn't know was that his great victory, because it defeated the ace model army that Lincoln had painstakingly built, was particularly significant, and even caused a series of chain reactions and accelerated the end of this war! (To be continued......)