The angel’s glow: how the soil healed wounded soldiers

26 mei 2023

(Sustainable Human) How did the soil help to heal wounded soldiers in the civil war battle of Shiloh, Tennessee?

The angel’s glow

After the Civil War battle of Shiloh, Tennessee, in 1862, 16,000 injured soldiers were strewn across the battlefield. So great were their numbers that neither army was able to retrieve and treat them quickly. Thousands were left lying in the mud, in some cases for two days and two nights. Many died from their wounds and the consequent infections.

How the soil healed wounded soldiers

But at night, some of the injured men noticed a strange blue glow emanating from their wounds. The light could be seen from a distance. Field surgeons observed that the soldiers whose wounds emitted this blue light healed more quickly and had a higher rate of survival than those who didn’t. They called it the Angel’s Glow.

What was it? At the time, people believed it was divine intervention: these men must have been touched by the healing hands of angels.

It took almost 140 years for a scientific explanation to emerge…this is the story of the science behind the Angel’s Glow.

The Angel’s Glow is a story from George Monbiot’s new book, Regenesis.

For the first time since the Neolithic, we have the opportunity to transform not only our food system but our entire relationship to the living world.

In this brilliant, bracingly original new book, Regenesis, we find a breathtaking vision of a new future for food and for humanity. Drawing on astonishing advances in soil ecology, George Monbiot reveals how our changing understanding of the world beneath our feet could allow us to grow more food with less farming. He meets the people who are unlocking these methods, from the fruit and vegetable grower revolutionizing our understanding of fertility; through breeders of perennial grains, liberating the land from ploughs and poisons; to the scientists pioneering new ways to grow protein and fat. Together, they show how the tiniest life forms could help us make peace with the planet, restore its living systems, and replace the age of extinction with an age of regenesis.