The Slave South: Medicine Chests and Self-Sufficiency in Medical Care

From: historyengine.richmond.edu R. Jeffery and A. Alt advertised the sale of aromatic snuff in the American Beacon and Commercial Daily on June, 27 1817 in Norfolk, Virginia. Jonathon P. Whitwell prepared and bottled the aromatic snuff in Boston. Whitwell shipped the snuff to Norfolk and various other locations across the East coast. Jeffery and Alt sold the aromatic snuff to Virginians who desired to fill their medicine chests in order to gain self-sufficiency in medical care. According to Catharine C. Hopely, a tutor at Forest Hill near Tappahannock County in 1815, a capacious medicine chest is an inseparable part of a Southern establishment;...

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How the Civil War Changed Modern Medicine

By Emily Sohn The American Civil War often gets credit for ending slavery and reshaping the federal government in this country. But the War Between the States has another, often overlooked legacy: It may have started a new era in modern medicine. As soldiers fell in unprecedented numbers from both injuries and disease, anesthesia became a specialty. The fields of plastic and reconstructive surgery exploded. And doctors developed new ways to treat a surge in nerve injuries and chronic pain, marking the beginning of contemporary neurology. At the same time, a visionary surgeon named Jonathan Letterman forever altered the flow of medical treatment...

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Susan Blackford Agreed to Take Up Nursing

From: historyengine.richmond.edu On July 08, 1861, Susan Leigh Blackford wrote to her husband, a lieutenant who served in the Confederate army to inform him she was not “at father’s all day sewing for the [Confederate] soldiers,” her regular daily activities, but writing for a special occasion. Blackford agreed to open a local Ladies’ Hospital for injured soldiers with another woman, Mrs. Otey. Nineteenth century women were not allowed in the hospitals of soldiers; however with the establishment of a Ladies’ Hospital, the army would not have to pay for a female nursing staff, nor the extra care wounded men would receive once they were removed...

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An Assistant Surgeon Reports on Gangrene

From: historyengine.richmond.edu Andersonville's prison had a hospital crowded with patients, due to the bad living conditions in the cells. The prison was overcrowded with prisoners crammed in rooms, inactive and secluded from society, lacking food, exercise and fresh air. The atmosphere was so polluted that people could hardly breathe. The promiscuity made sickness spread in a heartbeat, and in the winter of 1865, the prison witnessed an epidemic of what was called hospital gangrene, in addition to the usual scourges of diarrhea, dysentery and scorbutus. The assistant surgeon of the hospital reported that the epidemic was due to all these...

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Armory Square was a Military Hospital

From: historyengine.richmond.edu Armory Square was a military hospital that sprang up in Washington D.C. during the Civil War, from 1862-1865, which recorded unprecedented numbers of soldier casualties and deaths. While not the first military hospital to open in Washington D.C. during the Civil War, Armory Square Hospital is known for receiving some of the worst soldier casualties from Virginia’s battlefields. Situated nearest the steamboat landing at the foot of Seventh Street, S.W., and the lines of Washington and Alexandria railroad, Armory Square Hospital was the first and only stop for many Union soldiers as the seriously wounded could...

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Surgeon Matt Turner Writes Letter of Hope and Worry to Home

From: historyengine.richmond.edu Assistant surgeon to the 22nd regiment of Alabama Infantry, Matt Turner wrote a letter to his mother on May 27, 1863, speaking of his weariness in waiting to hear news from home. He served on picket duty for the past three weeks, but was now managing the Wither’s Division hospital in Shelbyville, Tennessee. Turner found working at the hospital comfortable, although he spoke of the continuous changing circumstances that were a part of military life. He wrote, “… though everything is so uncertain in the army that I am never surprised or disappointed at anything that ‘turns up’.” Turner also mentioned both his...

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Emma Mordecai Nurses Soldier

From: historyengine.richmond.edu Emma Mordecai regularly visited wounded soldiers at a nearby hospital, and on one particular day she was tending to a handless soldier whom she called my interesting Cavalry man. She bathed his wounds and rubbed his cold feet, but then she watched helplessly as he complained of an intolerable itch where his hand used to be, scratching at the amputated spot with his remaining hand. Having cared for the soldier on prior occasions, Emma noted that he was more agitated than usual and sought out some liquor to calm him, meanwhile also delivering the ice cream she had bought for another soldier who had mentioned...

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Pennsylvania Surgeon Tends to the Wounded at South Mountain

From: historyengine.richmond.edu Dr. Theodore S. Christ completed his medical training in 1860, and he joined the Union army the following as a surgeon. In September of 1862, he served as the surgeon for the 45th Pennsylvania Infantry in the Ninth Corps of the Army of the Potomac. On the fourteenth of that month, General McClellan tasked Christ’s regiment with taking Turner’s Gap during the Battle of South Mountain. Their goal was to silence a Confederate artillery battery firing from the Gap. The soldiers fought uphill against Confederates defenders behind stone fences. However, despite the regiment being only one month old, Dr. Christ wrote...

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A Confederate Surgeon Establishes A Field-Hospital After the Battle of Franklin

From: historyengine.richmond.edu Large numbers of casualties and advanced weaponry made it necessary for surgeons to travel with military units during the Civil War.  While they could take surgeons along with them, they could not transport hospitals.  As a result, surgeons often had to improvise, turning abandoned buildings (when available) into makeshift hospitals or setting up field camps behind battle lines.  Deering J. Roberts, M.D., a Confederate surgeon, wrote an article sometime after his service in the Civil War detailing how he participated in establishing temporary hospitals both in buildings and in the field. Dr....

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Chas. M. Evans, Manufacturer of Artificial Limbs

From: historyengine.richmond.edu Chas. M. Evans, Manufacturer of Artificial Limbs of the best quality, solicits a share of the Southern patronage the ad read. Prices have been reduced and other special inducements are now offered Southern citizens and soldiers. To insure satisfaction, each leg may be fitted and test fully before any payment is required. Mr. Evans, purveyor of prosthetics, provides the Rev. C.K. Marshall of Vicksburg, Mississippi, as a reference to the suitability of his product for the citizens of the Vicksburg community. At the time the ad was placed in the Jackson Weekly Clarion on February 16, 1879, there would have been...

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Southern Women Help the War Effort in Florence, South Carolina

From: historyengine.richmond.edu On August 11, 1862, one month before Southern women were officially accepted as nurses, J. Bachman announced the importance women held in the medical effort in coastal South Carolina. She explained, in a local newspaper, a proposed arrangement concerning the delivery of imperative medical supplies to Florence, South Carolina. The Northeastern Railroad had been sending donated supplies free of charge, but there was a need for them to be properly collected and distributed. She proposed that an appointed female agent travel to Florence from wherever they might be on Tuesdays and Sundays to complete the receipt...

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Slave Owner Uses Modern Medicine to Treat Malaria

From: historyengine.richmond.edu In late September 1846 several slaves from the Fairntosh plantation in Durham, North Carolina fell sick with malaria. Their owner, planter Paul Cameron, tells his father Duncan how he provided medicine for his sick slaves as well as the traditional herbs and teas. “Since that time we have a great deal of chill and fever at the mill quarter in [unintelligible] I have made the best arrangements possible that I could for administration of medicine by cutting it up into portions one g[rain] for the elder ones and five grains for the younger [unintelligible] with a little oil with instructions for the use of our...

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A Local Describes Gettysburg After the Battle

From: historyengine.richmond.edu The Battle of Gettysburg remains the bloodiest battle in United States history. With a combined 51,112 men killed in the battle over a three day span, the momentum of the Civil War took a turn in favor of Union forces. With fallen soldiers decorating the landscape of the Gettysburg battlefield, "The Republican Compiler", a Gettysburg newspaper from 1854 to 1868, published vivid details of what the battlefield looked like and the significant effects the battle left on the town. A local man, Mr. Cooke, who was a special correspondent for "The Age", another local newspaper, gave one of the most graphic accounts...

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Childcare in the Civil War Era

From: faqs.org The contemporary idea of childhood in the United States is distinctly domestic: it regards the home and its appendages, such as schools and churches, as the child's proper places. Although U.S. attitudes toward childhood and children have European roots, approaches to child welfare in parts of Europe and non-Western societies often differ from American attitudes, since they have included the separation of children from their homes for purposes of maturation, APPRENTICE-SHIP, and early employment. From the American view, such practices are aberrant, harmful, and tantamount to ABANDONMENT in so far as they fall short of providing...

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Lunatic Asylums in Virginia after the Civil War

From: historyengine.richmond.edu In 1881 Mr. Johnson broke free from the Central Lunatic Asylum in Richmond, Virginia. After discovering that Johnson had escaped, the staff of the asylum realized that they needed to act quickly. An employee hurriedly wrote a note in order to inform the Sheriff of Louisa County of the incident before he had an opportunity to apprehend Johnson. On February 16, 1881 the employee reported to the Sheriff, Mr. Johnson, a colored inmate from your county escaped from this asylum. If he gives no trouble he will be allowed to remain at large. . . The staff of the asylum did not want the Sheriff to return Mr. Johnson...

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No Teeth, No Man: Dentistry during the Civil War

By Douglas Richmond During the American Civil War, the Union Army went the duration of the war without any military dental care. On the opposite side of the spectrum, the Confederate Army was heavily sympathetic to dental care and even employed dentists at one point during the war. As Dr. William Roberts explains in his March 1863 article for the New York Dental Journal, “There is no dentist in the army, so all the tooth has to do is rot away at its earliest convenience, when the soldier goes to the surgeon, the surgeon draws the tooth as expeditiously and painfully as he knows.” Those responsible on the Union military’s high command thought...

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Dentistry during the Civil War

From: civilwartalk.com About two decades before the Civil War, the dental profession had gained some standing. In the Confederate states there were about 500 Dentist. Jefferson Davis had always been an advocate for a dentistry corps. As Secretary of State under President Pierce, he had called for such a Corps but never was one in U.S. Army. After outbreak of War, the Confederate Army established a Dental program. The Union Army rejected one. Confederate Surgeon General Moore as well as Jefferson Davis was supportive of the idea of Army dentists. The dentists stated they owed more to Moore "than to any man of modern times". Soldiers tended...

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Dental Surgery in the 1840s

From: historyengine.richmond.edu A dental surgeon by the name of Peter J. Cairnes placed an ad in The Republican convincing the readers of the merits of dental surgery. Dr. Cairnes urges the public to start taking care of their children's teeth starting anywhere between the ages of seven and nine. Dr. Cairnes also offered a reduced rate for any slave owner or tobacco factory owner whose slave was in need of a tooth extraction. Dr. Cairnes acknowledges public skepticism in dentistry and the fact that dental surgery was thought of as nothing compared to general surgery, but attempted to make a claim for the advancement of dentistry and the...

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