A Case of Feigned Insanity

By J. Theodore Calhoun, Assistant Surgeon in the United States Army, And Surgeon in Chief, 2d Division, 3d Army Corps A most remarkable case of feigned insanity occurred in a regiment under the charge of a friend of mine. A supposed insane man was kept in the regiment for several months and his every action carefully and closely watched. He would sit for hours together on the color line or in the neighborhood of camp, with a pole, and imagine himself fishing. He was at length discharged, and when leaving his camp, one of his old company said to him: "Bill, what did you make such a d-d fool of yourself as to sit out in the sun all...

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Attack on Black Doctor in Army Uniform

From the U.S. National Library of Medicine   In early 1863, Alexander T. Augusta and Anderson R. Abbott, two black physicians, wrote letters to President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton requesting appointments as surgeons to the newly formed "colored regiments." Augusta received a military commission as a major, and Abbott was offered a position as contract surgeon with the rank of lieutenant.   Both men wore the uniforms of Union Army officers as symbols of pride and patriotism despite the risk to their personal safety. Their appearance in officer uniforms stirred pride in many former slaves and free...

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Dr. Augusta Faces Segregation in Washington, D.C.

From the U.S. National Library of Medicine    [Dr.] Alexander Augusta's public presence was often controversial, but proved to be a catalyst for change.   On a rainy day in February 1864, Augusta, in full military uniform, headed to a court martial in Washington, D.C. where he was scheduled to testify. He hailed a streetcar and attempted to enter the covered seated area. The conductor informed Augusta that he would have to stand up front with the driver as was usual for black riders. When Augusta refused, he was forcibly ejected and had to walk through the rain to reach the hearing.   Senator Charles Sumner...

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Chimborazo Hospital Employs Free Blacks

From the U.S. National Library of Medicine   Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond, Virginia, the largest Confederate hospital, relied on the slaves of local plantation owners and hospital surgeons to fill positions such as nurses, cooks, and laundresses. With over 5000 beds in 150 buildings and tents, Chimborazo treated over 77,000 patients during the war. After the fall of Richmond in 1865, it became a hospital for black Union soldiers.   James Brown McCaw was the chief administrator and surgeon-in-charge of Chimborazo Hospital during the Civil War. McCaw recognized the necessity of employing blacks at the hospital for the hospital's...

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African Americans Join the War Effort

 FROM: The U.S. National Library of Medicine   African American women and men joined the war effort working at hospitals, on the battlefield, and with relief organizations such as the United States Christian Commission. Their service was critical to the care and comfort of wounded soldiers.   IMAGE: Illustration of an African American man assisting a medical officer on the battlefield, Harper's Weekly, August 20, 1864    ...

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Dr. William P. Powell, Jr.

African American Surgeon   William P. Powell, Jr. was one of thirteen African American surgeons who served during the Civil War. Powell, a resident of New York City, received his medical education in England. In May 1863, he was hired as a contract assistant surgeon at Contraband Hospital in Washington, D.C., a medical facility that cared for emancipated slaves known as contraband. Assuming the duties of surgeon-in-charge six months after his appointment, Powell remained at the hospital for one year during which time he hired several black nurses and made requests for camp improvements including perimeter protective fencing.   From:...

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Night Blindness

By Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein   Night blindness, the inability to see at night while having normal vision during the day, is a result of vitamin A deficiency. Not surprisingly, the problem became worse as the war progressed because more soldiers had had poor nutrition for a longer period of time. At the time some doctors observed an increase in night blindness when scurvy increased. This is logical because both are related to vitamin deficiency, although not the same vitamins. Other doctors considered complaints of night blindness to be a form of malingering. It seemed particularly to be an excuse to get a furlough because night...

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Eye Ailments

By Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein During the Civil War many Union and Confederate soldiers suffered from eye problems. These problems tended to fall into three categories: disease, injury, and nutritional deficiency. Though Civil War physicians treated eye problems according to current knowledge, one important innovation on both sides was to establish special wards or hospitals devoted to eye disease and staffed by a skilled doctor. The Union forces had eye infirmaries in St. Louis, Missouri, and Washington, D.C., while in 1864 the Confederate Army of Tennessee had the Opthalmic Hospital at Athens, Georgia. Eye diseases were often labeled...

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Hospital Gangrene

By Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein   Hospital gangrene was a severe streptococcal wound infection that proved fatal to many soldiers, both North and South, during the Civil War. Because it was much more serious than other types of gangrene and developed only in large hospitals in major cities where many kinds of infections were treated, researchers suggest that it may have resulted from a combination of several types of bacteria. Hospital gangrene was extremely contagious and fast moving. A soldier with a healthy wound could contract the disease and be dead in several days. The edges of the infected wound turned a grayish color and the surrounding...

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Rochester City Hospital, New York

From: Rochester General Health System The American Civil War is considered one of the most defining periods in American history.  The war touched the lives of every American and influenced the early history of the Rochester City Hospital.  The magnitude of combat casualties prompted the creation of the Army Medical Corps.  The efficient organization of hospitals coupled with medical advancements such as camp sanitation, improved methods of transportation, and hospital design helped to decrease mortality rates and left a lasting effect on medical science for decades. Additionally, the Civil War became the training...

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James Baxter Bean, Confederate Dentist

By Colin F. Baxter, East Tennessee State University   James B. Bean was perhaps the single most important dental surgeon of the Civil War. Born in Washington County, June 19, 1834, James Bean could trace his heritage to the first white settlers of the state. He was the great-grandson of William and Lydia Bean, grandson of Russell Bean, and son of Robert and Mary Hunter Bean. Since Dr. Bean practiced dentistry in other states, left no direct heirs, died on Mont Blanc and was buried in Chamonix, France, his brilliant dental accomplishments during the Civil War have largely escaped the attention of his own state.   Bean attended...

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Camp Itch

By Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein "Camp Itch" was a painful skin disease, involving itching, lesions, and inflammation, suffered by soldiers both North and South during the Civil War. Doctors debated the cause of the itch. Certainly some cases were really scabies, a very contagious skin disease caused by mites and quickly spread by shared blankets as well as in crowded conditions. Some doctors, however, stated that camp itch was not scabies as no "animaliculae" were present. Whether scabies or not, the itch resulted from the poor hygiene of troops who bathed infrequently, suffered numerous scratches and bites, and were generally very dirty. Then,...

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President Lincoln and Medical Malpractice

An improperly healed fracture was the most common reason for the medical malpractice crisis between the 1830s and 1860s in the United States. As a practicing lawyer in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln defended physicians in medical malpractice law suits. One of these was Dr. Powers Ritchey, who was sued for malpractice in 1855. Lincoln agreed to represent Dr. Ritchey in 1858 as the case was appealed to the supreme court of Illinois. In the interim, Lincoln defended two indicted murderers and won the acquittals for both. Between the two murder trials, Lincoln debated Stephen A. Douglas while running for U.S. Senator from Illinois. Lincoln believed...

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The United States Naval Academy Hospital

After the South captured Fort Sumter, authorities worried that the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, was vulnerable to a secessionist attack and moved the school to Newport, Rhode Island, for the duration of the war. The Academy was temporarily turned over to the Union Army which used it for a military hospital. The soldiers sent to the Naval Academy Hospital suffered from long-term illnesses or severe wounds. Many were not expected to make a full recovery. The hospital received a large number of patients in July and August of 1863 from the Battle of Gettysburg, and continued to receive many patients until of the end of the war. Tents...

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Management of Jaw Injuries in the American Civil War

By Richard A. Pollock, M.D., University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Lexington, Kentucky   James Baxter Bean published a series of articles in the Southern Dental Examiner in 1862 describing his work with “plaster and its manipulations.” This early experience included a new way of managing jaw fractures, with customized splints uniquely based on pretraumatic occlusion. Bean's oral splints and their method of construction, using an articulator, became the standard of care in the Atlanta region during the American Civil War and, by 1864, throughout The Confederacy. In short course, Bean's approach also swept The Union, following...

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Use of a Fork to Lift a Depressed Skull Fracture

By Alfred Jay Bollet, M.D. On at least one occasion, Dr, Hunter Holmes McGuire, Stonewall Jackson's medical director and personal physician, attempted neuro-surgery in the field. A friend recorded: "I have seen him break off one prong of a common table fork, bend the point of the other prong, and with it elevate the bone in a depressed fracture of the skull and save life." (This describes an instrument not unlike some modern bone "elevators" that surgeons still use.) Excerpted From: Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs ...

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Angela Gillespie, Mother Superior, Sisters of the Holy Cross

From: Department of the Navy--Naval Historical Center Eliza Maria Gillespie was born in Washington County, Pennsylvania, on 21 February 1824. After graduation from Visitation Academy in Georgetown, District of Columbia, in 1842, she performed charitable and other work in her parish and taught school in Pennsylvania and Maryland. In 1853, she joined the Sisters of the Holy Cross, a French order of Roman Catholic Nuns, taking the name Sister Mary of Saint Angela. During the next several years she directed the U.S. branch of the order and its school, Saint Mary's College, in South Bend, Indiana. Under her leadership, the Sisters of the Holy...

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Lafayette Guild, Confederate Medical Director

From: Encyclopedia Virginia Philadelphia-trained surgeon Lafayette Guild poses in his U.S. Army uniform while holding his medical service sword in this hand-colored daguerreotype. Appointed as an assistant surgeon in the U.S. Army in 1849, Guild served for a time on Governor's Island in New York harbor; while there, he conducted pioneering studies of yellow fever and its spread. At the beginning of the Civil War, the Alabama-born Guild returned to the South and offered his services to the Confederacy. In the midst of the fighting during the Seven Days' Battles in the summer of 1862, Confederate general Robert E. Lee took command of the...

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General Robert E. Lee Confronts Disease in Recruits

By Alfred Jay Bollet, M.D. The problem of sickness led General Lee to write to Secretary of War Randolph on October 8, 1862, three weeks after the Battle of Antietam (or, as he would have called it, Sharpsburg): "The medical director reports that . . .about 4,500. . .sick from this army are now accumulated in Winchester, and they are principally, if not altogether, the conscripts and recruits that have joined since we have been stationary. They are afflicted with measles, camp fever, &c. The medical director thinks that all the conscripts we have received are thus afflicted, so that, instead of being an advantage to us, they are an element...

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Maggots and Rats: Nature's Surgeons

By Alfred Jay Bollet, M,D. According to soldiers' letters, swarms of flies harassed them in every encampment and hospital. Because flies deposited their eggs in any open wound or in wounds covered with the standard moist dressings (apparently, the eggs could penetrate through several layers of moist muslin), maggots rapidly appeared in wounds. Although the maggots caused no pain, they disgusted the volunteer female nurses and their wiggling bothered the wounded men. Clinicians, therefore, used oil of turpentine, petroleum, kerosene, tobacco, chloroform, and antiseptics to kill the maggots when flies were present. In well-run hospitals, strict...

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Amy Morris Bradley, Nurse, Matron, Teacher

From Duke University Libraries Amy Morris Bradley was born in East Vassalboro, Maine on September 12, 1823, the youngest of several children. In 1840, she began work as a school teacher, first in her hometown and later in Charlestown and East Cambridge, Massachusetts. After several years of suffering from respiratory illness, she elected to leave New England in late 1853 for San Jose, Costa Rica, where she served as a governess and teacher. She established the first English-language school in Central America and taught there for three years, returning to the states in 1857 when her elderly father fell ill. After his passing she relocated to...

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"Dead Beats": Malingerers and Feigned Diseases

By J. Theodore Calhoun, Assistant Surgeon in the United States Army, And Surgeon in Chief, 2d Division, 3d Army Corps The term malingerer, which has always been in use in the army to designate a soldier who feigned disease, has been almost entirely superseded by a slang term, of the origin of which I am as ignorant as I am of its orthography, but which is pronounced "Dead Beat." I may be pardoned for introducing it here, as its use is so universal among all ranks and classes, from Major-Generals to drummer boys. The incentives to feign disease in the army are great, and the army practitioner has to be constantly on the alert to detect the...

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Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs

Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs by Alfred Jay Bollet, M.D. / Amputations on screaming, unanesthetized men is the image of Civil War medicine for most people. Dr. Bollet's extensive research has proved that this is a myth. Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs presents the remarkable story of healthcare workers' dedication and heroism in the face of a terrible war. Using a blend of first-person accounts, historical data, and modern medical knowledge, Dr. Alfred Jay Bollet revisits the battlefields, hospitals, and horrific conditions in which Civil War surgeons had to labor. He details the first dismal year, when a war expected to last a few short months instead left tens of thousands of soldiers dead and wounded. The widely reported tragedies of that year...

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John Meck Cuyler, M.D.

A Confederate Surgeon's Sacrifice John M. Cuyler was born in Savannah, Georgia on March 9, 1810. He entered the Regular Army as an Assistant surgeon in 1834, being among the first to pass the rigid examination instituted in 1833. Dr. Cuyler was a graduate of the West Point Military Academy. He was actively engaged in the Creek War of 1838, and the Seminole War of 1840. He served with distinction through the Mexican War, receiving promotion as Major and Surgeon on February 16, 1847. From 1848 until 1855,he served at West Point. When the secession crisis and Civil War ensued, he chose to remain with the U.S. Army. He was the senior medical...

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Microscope Use in the Civil War

By Alfred Jay Bollet, M.D. Civil War physicians routinely used microscopes to make diagnoses and to study the pathologic changes due to disease. Nevertheless, some historians have asserted that the "backward" Civil War physicians did not know how to use the microscope. Although it had been invented two centuries earlier, "the headquarters of the Army Medical Department did not have [a microscope] until 1863," and the Harvard Medical School catalogue didn't acknowledge possession of a microscope until 1869. The truth is considerably different. The microscopic study of minute anatomic and pathologic tissue changes developed rapidly in the United...

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Medical Examining Boards

By Alfred Jay Bollet, M.D. Examining boards for physicians seeking regular army commissions met in various cities almost continuously throughout the war. Officially appointed by the secretary of war, each board consisted of "not less than three medical officers" who were designated by the surgeon general. State examining boards oversaw physician appointments to the volunteer regiments. The Confederate army had the same system of examinations at the state and national levels. Typically, the examinations would last three or four and sometimes as long as six days. There was a high failure rate. Many candidates, fearing failure, cancelled their...

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Soldiers Learn to Cook Bacon

By Robert E. Denney Among the many things the new soldier had to learn was how to prepare food. A tract published for the Army of the Potomac explained to the soldier how to cook bacon. Bacon should be well washed and scraped and put to soak all night. In the morning, put it to boil slowly; simmering is better. After it has once boiled, throw the water off and fill up with fresh water; then let it simmer for three hours. When thoroughly done, the rind comes off easily, and the meat tastes fresh and sweet. The above assumes that there is time for the soldier to do all the soaking and boiling; that the bacon isn't so maggot-infested as to...

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Food Rations for Union Troops, 1861

By Robert E. Denney   May 1861 Food was another problem. The Regular Army had its own way of doing things and that method was carried over into the volunteer organizations. There were no "company messes" as such, nor were there any "company cooks." The rations were issued to the individual, and he was supposed to be able to fix his own in whatever manner he chose. At this time in the war, the ration consisted of: Pork or bacon, 12 oz.; fresh or salt beef, 1 lb, 8 oz.; flour, 1 lb. 2 oz., or 12 oz. hard bread, or cornmeal, 1 lb. 4 oz. For each 100 rations there was added beans or rice, 10 lbs., or 9 lbs. 12 oz. desiccated potatoes;...

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Lincoln Orders a Discharge for "Insanity"

By Thomas P. Lowry, M.D. Pvt. John Beiser, 32nd Indiana Infantry, deserted at Camp Fry, Kentucky, in April, 1863. When captured, he was convicted and sentenced to be shot. Much of the trial transcript centers on his mental condition. His officers offered these comments, "He used to be crazy some of the time, with spells of lunacy lasting six to 24 hours, once or twice a week. . . He accused me of having sexual intercourse with Mrs. Beiser, even though she was a hundred miles away . . .He said he could hear his wife crying. . .He is much worse during a full moon. . . He once jumped out of his tent and fired his gun." The court petitioned for clemency because of "insanity." The case came to the Executive Mansion, Lincoln's Judge Advocate General, Joseph Holt, prepared his report. "June 5,...

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Remarks on Dentistry in the Army

By Wm. B. Roberts, M.D. Of New York June 29, 1861 It is well known to the dental profession that all the diseases common to teeth can not only be cured, but may be prevented by proper and timely treatment. After having thus enumerated the evils appertaining to a defective condition of the teeth, a condition which experience has found to exist among the army to an extraordinary extent, and having shown the importance of such diseased condition being avoided and changed to aid in establishing a proper sanitary condition among these men who risk their lives for their country's service, and have neither time, means, nor opportunity for themselves...

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Civil War Thermometers

By Alfred Jay Bollet, M.D. Civil War physicians are . . .criticized for their failure to use even the few thermometers they had. Yet they were by no means behind their contemporaries in Europe in this regard. Thermometers were cumbersome to use, as they were usually placed in the armpit for a long period of time, and so w ere just "not used very much." Body temperature was ascertained only during the investigation of unusual diseases, such as in Confederate physician Joseph Jones's study of "traumatic tetanus" published during the war. Not until 1867 did German professor of medicine Carl Wünderlich introduce thermometry to bedside medicine....

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Surgeon-General Moore Suggests a Substitute for Quinine

  SURGEON-GENERAL'S OFFICE Richmond, Va., December 5, 1863   Surg. R. POTTS, Medical Purveyor, Macon, Ga.:   SIR: Below you will find a formula for a compound tincture of the indigenous barks to be issued as a tonic and febrifuge and substitute as far as practicable for quinine.   Very respectfully, your obedient servant, S.P.MOORE Surgeon-General C.S. Army   Dried dogwood bark, 30 parts; dried poplar bark, 30 parts; dried willow bark, 40 parts; whisky, 45 degrees strength; two pounds of the mixed bark to one gallon of whisky. Macerate fourteen days. Dose for tonic and anti-febrifuge purposes, one ounce...

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Confederate Opium and Quinine Shortages

By Alfred Jay Bollet, M.D.   Quinine and opium were the most urgently needed drugs during the war and strenuous efforts were made to find plants that would serve as alternatives. Confederates tried to substitute extracts of a variety of tree barks for the Peruvian bark, separately and in combination, but none worked. At the suggestion of Surgeon General Moore, fields of opium-producing poppies were widely planted in the Confederacy, "but very little opium was gathered," and almost all the opium and morphine used was brought in through the [Naval] blockade.   Confederates established drug (called "chemical") manufacturing...

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Drugs in the Field

By Alfred Jay Bollet, M.D. Writing more than 50 years after the war, Charles Beneulyn Johnson, hospital steward of the 130th Illinois Volunteers, remembered the items supplied to regimental surgeons in the field: "During a campaign our stock of medicines was necessarily limited to standard remedies, among which could be named opium, morphine, Dover's powder, quinine, rhubarb, Rochelle salts, castor oil, sugar of lead, tannin, sulphate of copper, sulphate of zinc, camphor, tincture of opium, tincture of iron, tincture opic, camphorata, syrup of squills, simple syrup, alcohol, whiskey, brandy, port wine, sherry wine, etc. . . Practically all...

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Mother Bickerdyke's Home Remedies

By Robert E. Denney June, 1864 In Georgia, Mother [Mary Ann] Bickerdyke and Mrs. [Eliza C.] Porter were following Sherman's fifteenth Corps, doing all they could for the sick and wounded. One major problem was the lack of medicines and drugs, since the army made little provision for the treatment of the patients. This was the period when Bickerdyke's knowledge of botanical medicine came into play. for her, the woods abounded with plants (weeds, to some) that could be used effectively. Blackberries were plentiful, and blackberry cordial could be used to treat diarrhea, Painkillers could be made from the jimsonweed, and heart stimulants from...

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Dr. Chase's Home Remedies

"DR. CHASES'S RECIPES or Information for Everyone" From: PenguinClassics.com Born in Cayuga County, New York, Alvin Wood Chase (1817-1885) spent his early years peddling household wares and medicines along the Maumee River near Toledo, Ohio where he also collected folk remedies. His first publication of A Guide to Wealth! Over One Hundred Valuable Recipes for Saloons, Inn-Keepers, Grocers, Druggists, Merchants and Families Generally was published in 1858 and by the 1863 edition, the book contained over 800 recipes. In 1897 he published Dr, Chase's Third, Last and Complete Receipt Book. His books were great sellers especially among pioneers...

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The Western Sanitary Commission

THE WESTERN SANITARY COMMISSION By Robert E. Denney   June 1, 1863 The Western Sanitary Commission, originally established on September 10, 1861, in St. Louis, Mo,, had by this date distributed more than 752,938 articles since November 1, 1861 (no records were kept during September and October, 1861). These articles, valued at $395,335.96, consisted of blankets, pillows, sheets, comforts, bed sacks, shirts and drawers, socks, slippers, towels, handkerchiefs, dried and canned fruits, jellies, pounds of butter, pounds of zwieback, pounds of crackers, packages of farina, bushels of vegetables, bottles of wine, brandy, and whiskey,...

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Sarah Emma Edmonds, Union Nurse and Spy

By Christie Hoerneman Historians believe at least 400 women served in the Civil War as soldiers, but documented cases are very few. One woman who served with a Michigan regiment and witnessed the Battle of Fredericksburg, Emma Edmonds, documented her time serving with Company F, the Flint Union Greys, of the Second Michigan Infantry Volunteers   by writing a memoir, Unsexed; or, The Female Soldier (which was reprinted a year later as Nurse and Spy in the Union Army. Edmonds was born as Sarah Emma Evelyn Edmonds in New Brunswick, Canada, in December of 1841. There were not many opportunities for a young woman to support herself,...

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Fannie Beers, Florence Nightingale of the South

By Maggie MacLean There is not much information available about the personal life of Fannie Beers, only that she was born in the North, and married A. P. Beers when she was very young. She wrote in her memoirs, Memories: A Record of Personal Experiences and Adventures During Four Years of War, that she met him while he was a student at Yale University and she was living with her mother in New Haven, Connecticut. The couple moved to New Orleans at some point, and Fannie apparently grew to love the South and its people. Married bliss lasted only a few years before the Civil War began. Mr. Beers enlisted in the Confederate Army, and became a...

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