Between 1861 and 1865, the United States was involved in a bloody conflict that cost the lives of more than 600,000 people. The Civil War, as it is often called, was fought on several fronts: the Northern Union against the Southern Confederacy. Although the war ended with a Northern victory and slavery being abolished throughout the country, it remains one of the bloodiest conflicts in American history.
An important aspect of this terrible war was that angels were believed to have intervened on several occasions to aid or heal Union soldiers. Many soldiers reported seeing small lights around them as they lay dying from their wounds or even before they were injured. These light phenomena are thought by some to be an example of heavenly intervention into human affairs.
“Angel’s Glow” is the name given to such a heavenly strange phenomenon that occurred in the Battle of Shiloh, during the Civil War. Thousands of soldiers witnessed a glow emanating from their wounds and helping them heal. Despite the strangeness of the case, there could be an explanation.
The Battle of Shiloh (1862), the bloodiest of the American Civil War, consisted of a surprise attack by the Confederates against the Union, to push them back and away from the Tennessee River. But the confusion of the troops turned that place into a slaughter that ended with the victory of the Union forces, and with a Dantesque death toll: more than 3,000 soldiers killed and more than 16,000 wounded. Doctors on both sides were incapable of treating everyone, and the worst part was that the help would take two days.
And there, sitting in the mud, in the middle of the cold bleak night and even in the rain at times, some soldiers noticed that their wounds were emitting a faint blue-green glow, something they had never seen before. When they were finally evacuated, those who had seen their wounds gleam had a higher survival rate, healed faster, and their wounds left fewer scars. For what they called the “Angel’s Glow.”
The story went unexplained until 2001, when a 17-year-old high school student, named Bill Martin, and his 18-year-old friend Jon Curtis did the research for their science project and proposed that a bacteria called Photorhabdus luminescens could be responsible for Angel’s Glow phenomenon.
These bacteria are luminescent and only live in cold and humid environments. The battle was fought in early April when temperatures were low and the grounds were wet with rain. The injured soldiers were left to the elements of nature and suffered from hypothermia. This would provide a perfect environment for P. luminescens to overtake and kill off harmful bacteria avoiding possible infections. And later in the hospital, under warmer conditions, these bacteria died, leaving the wound totally clean.
Often, a bacterial infection in an open wound would herald a fatal outcome. But this was an instance where the right bacterium at the right time was actually instrumental in saving lives. So, the soldiers at Shiloh should have been thanking their microbial buddies. But who knew back then that angels came in microscopic sizes? As for Martin and Curtis, they went on to win first place in team competition at the 2001 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.
