The British weren’t the deadliest enemy facing George Washington’s army. Disease was. And one controversial medical decision may have helped save the American Revolution.

In this special Independence Day episode of Beyond Ether Dome, Dr. Robert Lane and Dr. Bart Patenaude explore the Revolutionary War through the eyes of its soldiers, surgeons, and patients.

More American servicemen died from disease and imprisonment than on the battlefield. Dysentery swept through unsanitary camps. Typhus followed lice, hunger, and overcrowding. Smallpox devastated military units, discouraged enlistment, and helped cripple the American campaign in Canada.

We examine what medicine could—and could not—do for the ordinary soldier. We follow a country doctor who happened upon James Monroe on the road to Trenton and then sa ...