The Physical Examination

By J.P. Rogers, 2-16-13 One of the last major events to take place at the Camp of Instruction at Jamaica was the physical examinations of the soldiers of the Eighth Connecticut.  Oliver writes to Abbie that “the men are not troubled with clothes while undergoing this examination.”[i] Civil War Surgeons faced a daunting challenge when attempting to weed out those recruits not fully medically fit for duty with the limited nature of the physical examinations in relation to modern physical examination standards. One former soldier, writing after the war, described the process: The next step was a medical examination to determine physical...

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History Affects Morphine: The Hypodermic Needle

From: itech.dickinson.edu, 4-30-08 “Ah! Pierce me one hundred times with your needle fine And I will thank you one hundred times, Saint Morphine, You who Aesculapus has made a God.” - Jules Verne (Poem taken from In the Arms of Morpheus by Barbara Hodgson) Despite its impact on the science of pharmacology, morphine had limited medical impact until the invention of the hypodermic needle in the 1840s/1850s A number of individuals are associated with the invention of the hypodermic needle, but among them, Alexander Wood, a Scottish physician, is perhaps the most prominent Wood used morphine in conjunction with his newly invented needle to...

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Euphemia Goldsborough: Confederate Nurse and Smuggler from Maryland

By Maggie MacLean, 12-8-14 Euphemia Goldsborough exemplifies the Southern woman committed to the Confederacy. Against all odds and at great risk to her own personal safety, she smuggled necessities into Southern hospitals and Northern prisons. Her story is one of courage, compassion and endurance. Early Years Euphemia Goldsborough was born June 5, 1836 at Boston, the family farm on Dividing Creek in Talbot County, Maryland. Euphemia was one of eight children born to Martin and Ann Hayward Goldsborough. She studied at a girls' boarding school in Tallahassee, Florida during the 1850s, and then joined her family at their new home in Baltimore,...

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A Field Hospital at the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky

From: tm4me.org Dr. Charles Todd Quintard 's description of a field hospital at the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky: "When the wounded were brought to the rear, at three o’clock in the afternoon, I took my place as a surgeon…and throughout the rest of the day and until half past five the next morning, without food or any sort, I was incessantly occupied with the wounded.  It was a horrible night I spent,--God save me from such another…. "About half past five in the morning of the 9th, I dropped—I could do no more.  I went out by myself and leaning against a fence, I wept like a child.  And all that day I was so unnerved that...

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Clara Barton: American Red Cross Founder

From: womensmemorial.org The suffering of wounded and sick soldiers moved Clarissa Harlowe Barton, who later became famous as Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, to become involved in war relief work. At the start of the war, Barton was a 39-year-old spinster, one of a small number of women working full time as a copyist in the US Patent Office in Washington, DC. When Barton learned that in many cases the wounded suffered because military hospitals were short of supplies, she used her own money to purchase pickled vegetables and homemade jellies to supplement the standard military diet of hardtack and salt pork. She also collected...

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Medical and Surgical Care During the American Civil War, 1861–1865

By Robert F. Reilly, MD Abstract This review describes medical and surgical care during the American Civil War. This era is often referred to in a negative way as the Middle Ages of medicine in the United States. Many misconceptions exist regarding the quality of care during the war. It is commonly believed that surgery was often done without anesthesia, that many unnecessary amputations were done, and that care was not state of the art for the times. None of these assertions is true. Physicians were practicing in an era before the germ theory of disease was established, before sterile technique and antisepsis were known, with very few effective...

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History & Economics of Tobacco

From: healthliteracy.worlded.org Tobacco has a long history in the Americas. The Mayan Indians of Mexico carved drawings in stone showing tobacco use. These drawings date back to somewhere between 600 to 900 A.D. Tobacco was grown by American Indians before the Europeans came from England, Spain, France, and Italy to North America. Native Americans smoked tobacco through a pipe for special religious and medical purposes. They did not smoke every day. Tobacco was the first crop grown for money in North America. In 1612 the settlers of the first American colony in Jamestown, Virginia grew tobacco as a cash crop. It was their main source of...

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Soldier's Disease

From: drvitelli.typepad.com, 2-6-11 The American Civil War (a.k.a. The War Between the States) was long and terrible. Beginning in 1861, the four-year war is still the deadliest in American history with an estimated 620,000 soldiers killed and an indeterminate number of civilian casualties. Approximately ten percent of all Northern males and 30 per cent of all Southern males were killed in the fighting and the social and political costs left their mark on the United States for generations afterward.  As one of the first "modern" wars with heavy artillery and other weapons of mass destruction, physicians on both sides of the conflict...

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Suicide and the Civil War

Kathleen Logothetis Thompson While Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was not yet diagnosed in the 1860s, soldiers have always faced the physical and psychological consequences of soldiering. Combat stress manifests itself in many ways, suicide being the most shocking reaction to the stresses of war. Civil War soldiers had social and cultural tools to help them cope with the experiences of camp and battle, but in some cases those tools broke down, leading to psychological stress or suicide. Statistically, suicides were few in the armies. The Union army reported only 391 official suicides during the war (approximately 0.02% of Union soldiers)...

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Civil War-Era Women Physicians

By Alfred Jay Bollet, M.D.         It is unclear how many women were working as physicians in the United States before the Civil War. In the mid-1800s, medical students commonly learned from a preceptor without attending a formal medical school. At least one woman, Margaret Cannon Osborne, is known to have acquired her education in this manner and entered practice, and there may have been others like her. Also, many women learned medicine from their husbands or fathers in this fashion and then assisted in their practices. An unknown number of women attended medical school during this period dressed in male attire and went...

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Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, First (And Only) Female MOH Recipient

By Siggurdsson, 7-29-11 Mary Edwards Walker was born in Oswego, New York on November 26, 1832. She was the fifth of six children and the youngest daughter. She worked on her family's farm through most of her young life, usually wearing men's clothes as they were not as restricting. She received an elementary education, taught by her mother. She attended Syracuse Medical College, graduating in 1855 as one of the country's first women doctors. She married a classmate named Albert Miller. They set up a joint medical practice in nearby Rome, NY but they were not very successful. When the American Civil War began in 1861, Mary Walker volunteered...

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