Andersonville Prison

From: The Civil War Lady

 Andersonville Prison was one of many built in early 1864. It was up and running for 14 months. More than 45,000 Union soldiers were confined there, which is almost double what the maximum capacity was. Almost 13,000 men died of diseases, malnutrition, and poor sanitation. It covered 16 1/2 acres but by June of 1865 had expanded to 26 1/2 acres. Many soldiers didn't even have tents, they were only able to use what was on their backs to keep warm and those who had tents were crammed into the stockade like sardines into a tin can.
                         
The prison had one water source, Providence Spring. The legend goes that a group of Christian soldiers decided to pray to God for more water. Their water rations were not enough anymore. So, one day a huge thunderstorm came and a bolt of lightening hit the ground. The soldiers said that where the lightening struck, a spring popped up out of the ground. They used this little spring that flowed from up hill to down hill for cooking, cleaning, bathing, and drinking. This means that if a man up hill had to use the restroom, a man down hill that had to get a drink, was drinking what the man up hill did in the water. This is the reason that so many died of poor sanitation.
                                                                                 
There were two  women soldiers that were held there, both of them gave birth in the prison. No one knew that they were indeed women until they did so. In many cases, no one knew they were female until they got to the "dead house". A dead house was a little building, or in some cases a lean-to, where the dead each day would be carried, stripped of everything valuable and then prepared to be buried. Soldiers would take shoes, shirts, pants, anything that was in good condition and distribute them to other soldiers that needed them. At the end of the day, Confederates would take the bodies away from the stockade and dig a trench. They would lay the bodies side by side, about 2 - 3 inches apart. Then the cycle would start all over again the next day.

Andersonville was shut down in 1865, due to the end of the war.
                   
When we see all of the pictures taken in prisons that held Union soldiers, we must also think of what our Men in Grey went through. Lincoln decided not to trade prisoners with the Confederacy. He then decided that the Confederate prisoners should not be allowed the same ration of food that Union troops were allowed. So not only were our Confederates cold they went hungry, too. Jeff Davis made several attempts with Abe Lincoln to peacefully trade prisoners, all of which Lincoln denied.

Image: An illustration of what Andersonville Prison looked like during the war.

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Mourning the Departed

From: thecivilwarlady.webs.com

In order to understand mourning rituals, you must understand the conditions of the 19th century; disease, caused by lack of sterile practices; diets, lack of vitamins and nutrients; medical treatments, some treatments or remedies were only a step above witchcraft, making death more prevalent than in the 20th century.

Doctors were not required to fulfill the education standards and requirements like they are suppose to today. Medical treatment consisted of blistering, bleeding and the use of many herbs and plants (which many were indeed fatal.) Germs were unheard of, sterile conditions were yet to be discovered and no one had a clue what antibiotics were. Many died from something as simple as a small cut on the finger. Childbirth also claimed many lives of women. It wasn't unpopular for a woman to make arrangements regarding the care of the infant should she not survive.

Many factors played into the death of children, such as disease, poor nutrition, accidents and impure water. Couples had large families so that hopefully a few children would live to adulthood. Typhoid, Malaria, Yellow Fever, Small Pox, and Whooping cough could wipe out an entire family. other ailments were the Flu, Pneumonia, TB and infections. Some remedies were rather bizarre; burning gun powder in sick rooms, sprinkling houses with vinegar, placing an ax under the bed to stop bleeding, placing a knife under the pillow to cut pain and intentional blistering to draw out the disease.

Preventative medicine was unheard of and treatments such as inoculation for small pox killed as many patients as it saved.

Americans were forced to deal with death far more often than we know today. Death was so prevalent that mourning rituals and customs were refined from centuries of superstitions and beliefs as a way of showing proper respect for the deceased. The wearing of black is a custom that has been used for centuries. it dates back to a time when death was feared and wearing black was thought to make mourners draw less attention to themselves so that death would not claim them as its next victim. Mourning rituals were directly aimed at women, especially widows.

Men often had very few changes in their outward appearance. They were expected to wear black or a dark colored suit to a funeral, if possible. The use of the black armband was a sign of respect, usually worn for a few months or a yea, their daily routines of running the farm, plantation, or business didn't change, a widower would be able to remarry after the period of which he wore the armband. When attending funerals, men wore black or white silk hat bands, if the deceased was a young girl, then only white silk would be used.

• Mourning pertaining to women was in three stages- heavy/deep mourning, full mourning, and half mourning. Mourning a spouse generally would last one to 2 ½ years:
• For a parent: 6 months to a year
• For children over 10 yrs old: 6 months to a year
• For children under 10 yrs: 3 to 6 months
• Infants: 6 weeks and up
• For siblings: 6 to 8 months
• For aunts and uncles: 3 to 6 months
• For cousins: 6 weeks to 3 months
• For aunts or uncles related by marriage: 6 weeks to 3 months
• Grandparents: 6 months
• For more distant relatives and friends: 3 weeks and up

Heavy/Deep mourning lasted the minimum of a year and a day and could last as long as 2 ½ years. Black clothing, jewelry, veils, bonnets, outer wear, and crape characterized it. The use of crape to cover outer wear and bonnets usually lasted a year and a day, and then could be removed. Crape, if caught in the rain, would droop, and the color would run, ruining anything it came in contact with. This limited a widow’s ability to venture far from home. The fabric used was mostly wool, but cotton was widely used in the south. The fabric was to have to luster or shine. Ingredients used to keep the black from fading were such as ox gall, fuller’s earth, and egg yolks. Heavy mourning collar and cuffs were black, and by the 2nd year the woman could add lace. Hats were not to be worn for mourning; bonnets covered in crape would replace them. The veil was of black crape, and very long, but by the 2nd year it could be shortened. Mourning clothes were expected to be plain with little or no adornment.

Hoods were commonly made of black or white silk. Underpinnings were the standard of the day, with the exception that a black band was often added to the hem of the outermost petticoat in case it was seen. Jewelry was not used at all for the first few months, but for the remainder was made of jet. Jet was popularized by Queen Victoria but was eventually replaced by black glass and India rubber in America. Most jewelry items used in mourning consisted of rings, broaches, bracelets, lockets, and earrings. Mourning rings were traditionally given out to mourners as keepsakes, and were paid for by the deceased’s family. Jewelry for full mourning consisted of more gold, silver, jet, pearls and other stones.

Full mourning collars and cuffs were replaced by white, veils were taken off, crape was discarded, and jewelry of a wider variety was worn.

Half mourning included the addition of lilac, lavender, violet, mauve, and gray. The woman was no longer limited to just black. She would use black and white ornaments for evening wear, bonnets were white, lavender silk or straw.

For specific periods of time a widow would not leave her home and did not receive any visitors.  After a respectable time, she would then send out black edged cards advising friends and family that her time of heavy mourning had passed and she could now receive visitors. Parties, weddings, and other social affairs were hands off to those in mourning.

A widow would often put away her mourning clothes when the mourning period had ended instead of throwing it to a better use, although clothing and crape manufacturers created the myth that it was unlucky to do so.

Southern women were more likely to save their clothing should it be needed again and they knew it would be hard to replace it during the war. Often southern women could not obtain proper mourning clothing, and resorted to dying existing clothing if possible. Many journal entries describe the heartbreak of not being able to properly mourn the death of a loved one. Children, even babies, were put into mourning and would morn the loss of a parent for 6 months. Babies would often wear robes of white trimmed in black.

The worst fear of death was not of death itself, but the fear of not being mourned properly. Victorians also feared possibly being buried alive. Periodically, tombs were opened and remains were found near doorways or on the floor indicating that such fears were indeed grounded. Funerals were often prolonged to make sure that the deceased was in fact dead. Widows were often excused from the funeral of their husband, believing grief would be too much for her to bear. Mourning clothing was kept on hand by the wealthier women, but was also known to exchange clothing with friends and neighbors when needed. Mourning pictures were painted or embroidered in silk, cotton, or wool and served as remembrances. Many Victorian parlors often contained several memorials to those deceased.
In many communities, custom dictated that the church bell toil one time for each year of the deceased’s life. Businesses often closed for the respect for the deceased.

Clothing might have been made and kept in anticipation of a wake or funeral, and boards were often kept for years to make a coffin when needed.

Proper burial clothing was highly prized and often kept for years. In early times, a shroud was the garment of choice for burial, with armholes cut in the sides, most were made of flannel. They were generally black for adults, white for children. Later on, people began to be buried in clothing similar to that which they wore in life.

Embalming did not come into practice until after the War Between the States. Fancy metal caskets and vaults are all products of the 20th century.

Sending flowers came about during the 19th century to cover the smell while the family waited for the photographer to arrive and photographed the deceased. It was popular for people from the community to come and sit with the deceased from the time of death until the time of burial as a sign of respect. The custom of the rider less horse for the funeral of a soldier dates at least to the 1600s and was often put to practice during the War Between the States.

Covering mirrors in the house of the deceased, usually with crape, was done so that the next to look at the mirror would not be the next to die. Pregnant women were not allowed to attend funerals, taking the corpse from the house feet first in the belief that if the face of the deceased faced backward they might influence another member of the family to follow them in death, stopping clocks in the house of the deceased so that they might not choose someone to accompany then to the grave.

Photography came of age during the 1860’s and mourning photos were taken to preserve the image of the deceased. Burial was often held off for days or weeks waiting for the photographer to arrive. These images were often painted on clouds to show the picture is of the deceased and portraits of hair were placed in the parlor along with a wreath of hair from the deceased.

Widows would often cover their beds with black sheets, and wasn’t allowed to marry for at least a year; she shouldn’t marry until the complete decay of the deceased husband.

During the War Between the States, death was so wide spread that many women never came out of mourning until the war was over. When developing a proper mourning impression and ensemble one must be aware of the dire circumstances in the south that one was not always able to adhere strictly to mourning customs as people were able to in the north.

Due to blockades and shortages of imports, fabrics and articles were hard to obtain, many women could only mourn in their hearts and not in their appearance.

Image: Mary Todd Lincoln in mourning dress following the death of her son Willie in February, 1862.

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Study Analyzes Physical and Mental Scars of Civil War Vets

By Damon Adams— Feb. 27, 2006

Some ailments were not unlike those seen in soldiers in the years after the Vietnam War and in those coming home from Iraq.

In the War Between the States, soldiers dealt with cannons firing at them, hand-to-hand combat in open fields and the deaths of family and friends who served in the same military unit. The mental and physical scars of battle ran deep long after the firing stopped, with the traumatic experiences of the Civil War translating into a lifetime of increased physical and mental diseases for soldiers, according to a new study.

The youngest men and those who witnessed the most deaths had higher rates of postwar problems.
In fact, it appears that Civil War veterans had similar health effects as have Americans in other wars.

"There can be serious mental and physical health costs of traumatic war exposure," said Roxane Cohen Silver, PhD, co-author of the study in the February issue of Archives of General Psychiatry. The mental impact "was quite consistent with what we've seen in more recent wars."

Dr. Silver and fellow researchers analyzed the military and medical records of 15,027 Union Army veterans from the Civil War. They looked at cardiac, gastrointestinal and mental illnesses during the soldiers' lifetimes. Confederate soldiers did not have a comparable database for study, but researchers suspect that those troops had similar problems.

Civil War soldiers were vulnerable due to close-up combat, bloody battles and other reasons, researchers said. For one thing, family members and friends were often assigned to the same company, and when there were casualties, survivors were left with few remaining friends.

"It was very, very different from the [war] experience today," Dr. Silver said.

Researchers noted that the Civil War marked the beginning of recognition of mental health problems caused by war, a condition that was then labeled "irritable heart syndrome."
Impact of war

Dr. Silver said "85% of [soldiers in the study] had at least one sign of physical or mental difficulties" following the war. Of those veterans, about 40% had both physical and mental conditions. Cardiac and gastrointestinal ailments plagued about 18%.

The age of the soldier, extent of war horrors he witnessed and prisoner-of-war experiences were among the factors that contributed to increased postwar problems.

For example, soldiers who were ages 9 to 17 when they enlisted, were 93% more likely than soldiers 31 and older to have physical and mental disorders. They also were more likely to die early.

"They showed the greatest health problems over their lives," said Dr. Silver, professor of psychology and social behavior at the University of California at Irvine. "The combination of the trauma of being in the war so young and of witnessing death had [mortal] effects."

Soldiers in military companies with larger percentages of fatalities were 51% more likely to have cardiac, gastrointestinal and mental diseases, the study showed.

Prisoners of war were at greater risk of having physical and nervous diseases later in life, too.

However, wounded troops had an increased risk of mental disease but a lower risk of physical disease.
Dr. Silver said that may be because those who survived battle injuries were physically hardier in the first place.

"They were probably physically stronger people, but the strain did affect them mentally," she said.
In an editorial in the same issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, Roger K. Pitman, MD, said the study's findings echo results of previous research into the mental health status of Vietnam veterans, including posttraumatic stress disorder.

"Posttraumatic stress disorder did not begin with Vietnam. It was present in previous wars," said Dr. Pitman, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

He said combat's effects on mental health most likely apply to modern soldiers, including troops now serving in Iraq.

"It's still a problem and it's going to be a problem as long as there's combat," he said.

From: amednews.com

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The History of Caskets

By Austin Weber

The casket industry traces its roots back to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, where wood, cloth and paper were used to make sarcophagus-style burial boxes. In the United States, casket manufacturing developed in the late 19th century. Today, it is a $1.2 billion industry and Batesville Casket Co. is the leading manufacturer.

The casket industry traces its roots back to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, where wood, cloth and paper were used to make sarcophagus-style burial boxes. In Europe, the Celts began making caskets out of flat stones around the year 700. However, for centuries, caskets were only used to bury aristocrats and nobility. Most bodies were simply wrapped in burial shrouds.

In the United States, the early casket industry evolved from local furniture and cabinet makers who doubled as undertakers. They built wood caskets on an as-needed basis. During the Civil War, thousands of coffins were needed to transport dead soldiers, marking the start of the mass-produced casket era.

Steel caskets first appeared in the late 1840s, when Dr. Almond Fisk received a U.S. patent for a cast-iron casket that he claimed was airtight and indestructible. The bronze-finished “metallic burial case” featured a lid made from a sheet of glass, which allowed mourners to view the deceased.

According to the Casket & Funeral Supply Association of America (CFSA), casket manufacturing developed as a distinct business in the late 19th century. However, most companies only operated in local and regional markets.

Batesville Casket Co. (www.batesville.com) was founded in 1884, when local craftsmen began producing hand-made wooden coffins in a small town in southeastern Indiana. John Hillenbrand, a lumber merchant and entrepreneur, purchased the company in 1906.

Hillenbrand's four sons became involved in the business, including George Hillenbrand, who automated the factory to make it more productive. His numerous inventions made innovation a Batesville hallmark. Hillenbrand received more than 40 U.S. patents, including one for the first mass-produced metal-gasketed casket called the Monoseal.

In 1918, Batesville began making metal caskets. Just before World War II, the company developed a process that allowed it to mass-produce metal caskets more cost effectively than traditional wooden coffins.

During the 1940s, Batesville only made cloth-covered cardboard caskets to conserve metal and wood for the war effort. In 1948, the company started making metal caskets again. In fact, during the 1950s and 1960s, Batesville only produced metal caskets.

In 1973, three years after the 2009 Assembly Plant of the Year opened in Manchester, TN, Batesville began to make hardwood caskets again. Today, the company assembles wood caskets in Batesville, MS. Bronze, copper and stainless steel caskets are assembled in Batesville, IN. The Manchester plant mass-produces 18- and 20-gauge carbon steel caskets.

By the early 1950s, the CFSA says there were more than 700 casket manufacturers in the United States. However, after decades of consolidation, only147 companies were still active in 2003. Today, less than a dozen manufacturers assemble more than 90 percent of all metal caskets sold in the United States. The CFSA estimates that three companies (Batesville, Aurora Casket Co. and York Group) produce more than 70 percent of all caskets sold annually. Casket manufacturing in the United States is a $1.2 billion industry.

In 2004, Costco Wholesale Corp. caused an uproar in the industry when it started to sell steel caskets at low prices. Around the same time, some distributors began importing cheap caskets from China. To address the challenge, in 2005, Batesville created a brand of private-label products called NorthStar.

The National Museum of Funeral History (www.nmfh.org) in Houston features numerous exhibits on the history of caskets, including a turn-of-the-century casket factory and a display of fantasy coffins from Ghana, such as a car, a jet airliner and a fish.

Earlier this year, another facility, the Museum of Funeral Customs, closed in Springfield, IL. Among numerous displays, the museum featured replicas of the caskets used by Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

Image: Abraham Lincoln's casket

From: assemblymag.com

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African-American Civil War Doctors To Get Due

By IKE WILSON
February 19, 2013

FREDERICK, Md. (AP) — Dr. Robert Slawson and his wife, Mavis, attended a lecture in 2004 about African-American physicians in the Civil War. That experience prompted the retired oncologist to write a book dedicated to black men and women who practiced medicine during the war.

Slawson, a volunteer at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, had just finished a research project on medical education in the United States. In it, the principal historians said that African-Americans were not included in formal medical education until after the Civil War.

“I decided to look into this, hopefully to prove this wrong,” Slawson said. “To my surprise, I found evidence of medical graduation of several African-Americans before the war and identified more serving physicians than originally stated. This then became the basis of the book.”

Slawson will speak on his book, “Prologue to Change: African-Americans in Medicine in the Civil War Era,” on Feb. 23 at the museum. The book includes research on medical school graduates and the African-American men commissioned as Civil War medical officers.

The book is the first documentation of pre-Civil War medical school graduation for most of these African-Americans and discusses the entry of African-Americans into medical practice, said Slawson, who is a member of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, the Society of Civil War Surgeons, and the Society for Women and the Civil War.

“These guys are really heroes as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “It was difficult for anybody to do, but it was especially difficult for them. And they deserve to be known and honored by not only African-Americans, but by the entire country.

“I’ve always hoped putting something like this out will bring some awareness. I’m sure there were others, but prior to the middle of the 20th century it was nearly impossible to find any information on them.”

Most physicians do not realize there was a significant African-American presence in medicine at that time, Slawson said.

The doctors in his book include James McCune Smith, who graduated from the University of Glasgow School of Medicine in Scotland, becoming the first known African-American to receive a medical degree, in 1837. Ten years later, David James Peck became the first African-American known to receive a medical degree from a school in the U.S.: Rush Medical School in Chicago.

The most prominent of the group was Dr. Alexander Augusta, Slawson said.
Born in Norfolk, Va., Augusta could not attend medical school in the U.S., so he went to Ontario, Slawson said.

“In April of 1863, he was commissioned as a major in the Union Army, becoming the first African-American to get that position,” Slawson said, “and at the end of his tenure, was lieutenant colonel — the first African-American to have that rank.”

Slawson is a lecturer, author and respected docent of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, said Adele Air, the museum’s education director.

His research on African-American doctors is just one of the many areas of Slawson’s Civil War expertise, Air said.

Slawson graduated from the University of Iowa School of Medicine in 1962, interned in Youngstown, Ohio, and was drafted into the Army in the summer of 1963. He spent eight years on active duty in the Army, where he completed a residency in radiology at what was then Walter Reed Army Medical Center, as well as a fellowship in radiation oncology.

Slawson left the Army in 1971 and joined the faculty of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in radiation oncology. He retired in the summer of 1998 but stayed in Maryland and still works part time at the university.

“I have always been interested in history and the history of medicine,” he said, “and when the National Museum of Civil War Medicine moved back to its present facility after the renovations, Mavis and I visited and both decided to volunteer there starting in 2001.”

Image: Dr. Alexander Thomas Augusta

From: The News-Post of Frederick

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Georgeanna Woolsey : A Day in the Life of a Northern Nurse

From: civilwar.org

Georgeanna Woolsey was a young unmarried woman when the Civil War began. Shortly after the start of the war, the Woman’s Central Relief Association (a part of the U.S. Sanitary Commission) organized a volunteer nursing staff for the United States Army. In May 1861 she was one of one hundred women selected to become a volunteer nurse. With no prior medical training, she was sent to New York for, what she called in her diary, "a month’s seasoning in painful sights and sounds".

"We took off our bonnets and went to work. Such a month as we had of it, walking round from room to room, learning what we could—really learning something in the end, till finally, what with writing down everything we saw, and making elaborate sketches of all kinds of bandages and the ways of applying them, and what with bandaging everybody we met for practice, we at last made our ‘reverses’ without a wrinkle; and at the end of the month were competent to any very small emergency, or very simple fracture."

She was assigned to Washington D.C. in July 1861 where, she wrote, "Miss [Dorothea] Dix received us kindly and gave us a good deal of information about the hospitals, and this morning we went to the Georgetown Hospital to see for ourselves. We were delighted with all the arrangements. Everything was clean and comfortable. We shall go again and take papers and magazines."

Her pleasant early experiences were misleading, however. Later, looking back on her nursing career, she remarked, "No one knows who did not watch the thing from the beginning, how much opposition, how much ill-will, how much unfeeling want of thought, these women nurses endured. Hardly a surgeon whom I can think of received or treated them with even common courtesy. Government had decided that women should be employed, and the Army surgeons—unable, therefore to close the hospitals against them—determined to make their lives so unbearable that they should be forced in self-defense to leave."

She did not leave. As fighting became more intense, a makeshift hospital was set up in the Washington, D.C. patent office (now the National Portrait Gallery) where she continued to work as a nurse. She described her experiences:

"On the stacks of marble slabs…we spread mattresses, and put the sickest men. As the number increased, camp beds were set up between the glass cases in the outer room and we alternated—typhoid fever, cogwheels and patent churns, typhoid fever, balloons and mouse traps…Here for weeks, went on a sort of hospital pic-nic. We scrambled through with what we had to do…Here for weeks we worked among these men, cooking for them, feeding them, washing them, sliding them along on their tables, while we climbed up on something and made up their beds with brooms, putting the same powders down their throats with the same spoon, all up and down what seemed half a mile of uneven floor; coaxing back to life some of the most unpromising—watching the youngest and best die."

Georgeanna Woolsey lived with her married sister Eliza Woolsey Howland in Washington, D.C. while Eliza's husband, Joseph Howland, was serving in the Union Army of the Potomac. When the Army of the Potomac was ordered to leave the capital, Georgeanna and Eliza wanted to travel with it. They tried several times to get permission but were unsuccessful until the Sanitary Commission gave them positions on the hospital ship Daniel Webster. They sailed after the army in April 1862. She wrote, "Sunday, the first day [on the ship] was gone. As for us, we had spent it sitting on deck, sewing upon a hospital flag fifteen by eight, and singing hymns to take the edge off this secular occupation. It is to be run up at once in case we encounter the Merrimac."

Georgeanna's letters after 1862 were lost to a fire, but it is easy to see how the war had affected her over the course of one year. In May 1862, she wrote, "We are changed by all this contact with terror, else how could I deliberately turn my lantern on his [a wounded soldier’s] face and say to the Doctor behind me, “Is that man dead?” and stand cooly, while he listened and examined and pronounced him dead. I could not have quietly said, a year ago, 'That will make one more bed, Doctor.'”

—Source Letters of a Family During the War 1861-65, Privately published in 1899 by Georgeanna Woolsey Bacon and Eliza Woolsey Howland.

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On Bodies and Minds: Effects of the Civil War

From: news.pennmedicine.org

It’s hard to fathom, but to this day one startling Civil War statistic stands: approximately 625,000 American men – the equivalent of 6 million men today – were killed in action or died of disease between April 12, 1861 and April 9, 1865. That’s more than in World War I, World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam War combined.

#48 - Hospital for the Insane - Dept. for FemalesWith defeat of the Southern Confederacy, the Civil War – referred to during its time (depending upon what side you were on) as the War of Southern Rebellion or War of Northern Aggression – resulted in three new amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the abolishment of slavery and the preservation and subsequent redefinition of the U.S. as a single nation. These are the usual take-away points we glean from the history books. But what of the survivors? The physically and mentally maimed veterans and collaterally damaged civilian victims of the Civil War era?

No stranger to American history, Pennsylvania Hospital (PAH) – the nation's first hospital, founded in 1751 by Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Thomas Bond – is currently hosting two free, historical exhibits which offer a retrospective look into the effects the Civil War had on the bodies and minds of Americans.

On loan from the National Institutes of Health, the first exhibit, Life and Limb: the Toll of the American Civil War, is on display in PAH’s Historic Surgical Amphitheater until October 6th. (NOTE: This exhibit is now closed.)

Over three million soldiers fought in the Civil War over the course of four years. Over half a million died, and almost as many wounded survived. Many veterans were permanently disabled from battlefield injuries or surgery which, even during a time of no antibiotics and not enough ether to go around, saved lives by sacrificing limbs. The Life and Limb exhibit explores the harrowing experience of these disabled veterans, which transformed them into indelible symbols of a fractured, young nation and a reminder of the high cost of war.

One floor down from the Surgical Amphitheater in PAH’s original building, the Pine Building, is the Historic Medical Library. Open since 1762, the Library is the oldest medical library in the United States and the home of the second exhibit: Mental Health During the Civil War: Thomas Story Kirkbride and the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane. This one-of-a-kind exhibit explores the treatment of the mentally ill during the Civil War period from a very direct and “hands on” point of view. Brought to PAH by the Hospital’s own Curator and Lead Archivist, Stacey Peeples, this exhibit will be on display and open to the public until September, 1, 2013.

Setting the Scene
As the nation's first hospital, PAH was also the first to treat mental illness and became a primary force in shaping the attitude of colonial Americans toward people with emotional and psychological disorders. PAH was the first in the nation to take the stance that mental illness was a disease of the mind, rather demonic possession. Consistent attempts were made to actually treat the mentally ill, not just warehouse them. By today’s standards the care would not seem so humane – it might be perceived as horrific – nor was it often effective. However, the approach was groundbreaking, placing great emphasis on recreational and occupational therapies, a tactic still employed today. The number of insane patients at PAH far outnumbered physically ill throughout much of the 18th and 19thcenturies.

“While Pennsylvania Hospital was chartered to accept the mentally ill, the care of those individuals proved more complex than anticipated,” Peeples said. “The mentally ill did not enter the hospital for a short term visit, but very often became permanent guests, spending years and sometimes decades, at the hospital. Try as they might, the physicians did not have the answers to curing the mentally ill.”

And issues were mounting, as hospital staff attempted to keep the presence and cries of the mentally ill from upsetting and disturbing the other physically ill patients. Segregation was the first step in trying to best accommodate all Hospital patients. So with space at a premium, the Hospital's Board of Managers agreed to purchase a large farm in West Philadelphia on which a facility could be built to house mentally ill patients.

“Moving the mentally ill into the WInstitute Collection - Kirkbride Stereoscopeest Wing of the Pine Building was one small step forward, but the proverbial giant leap came when Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbridewas hired as superintendent of the new, 101 acre institution in West Philadelphia,” said Peeples.

The Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, later called the Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital, was opened in the winter of 1841, when 100 mentally ill patients were slowly transferred in carriages from the bustling city streets at 8th and Spruce Streets to the new, rural facility west of “then” Philadelphia, that had been specially prepared for their care.

A 31-year-old Quaker physician at the time of his hiring, Kirkbride, though trained as a surgeon, had gained early experience working with the insane. As the new asylum's first chief physician, Kirkbride was a maverick in his field as an advocate for “moral treatment” of the mentally ill. His basic tenet was that the mentally ill could be treated humanely, in a rational manner, and brought back to their rational selves. While only half of Kirkbride's patients eventually recovered and resumed their positions in the world, this still remains a striking accomplishment in an era when effective medications and other modern treatments were virtually non-existent.

In the years running up to the Civil War, the need for appropriate treatment facilities to house the mentally ill only increased. In 1859, five blocks west of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, a twin version of the mental hospital is opened at 49th and Market Streets. The original campus becomes The Department for Females, and the newer campus is The Department for Males.

“From the official record, it seemed as if the Civil War had minimum impact on the Institute or Dr. Kirkbride, but looking at his correspondence, it is evident that the war was an ever present reality,” said Peeples. “Kirkbride was extremely well connected and corresponded with almost every ‘asylum keeper’ or superintendent across the country.”

Throughout the Civil War years, Kirkbride faced many challenges to method of care for those under his charge. The south was literally and figuratively cut off from the north, prohibiting families from sending money to fund care for their mentally ill relations institutionalized at the Institute. “This caused a great deal of stress for everyone involved, including the Board of the Pennsylvania Hospital, who briefly considered discharging those southern patients for lack of payment,” said Peeples. “Luckily for all involved, the Board decided to loan the Institute the money it was lacking to continue the care of those individuals and their families were to be contacted after the war to resume payment.”

Some of the gems visitors can see at the Mental Health During the Civil War exhibit include:

• Displays covering the improvements in professions nursing and surgical techniques as a result of the Civil War years
• Displays and images of Kirkbrides’ Magic Lantern Shows and how they reinforced his method of “moral treatment of the mentally ill"
• “Reformers & Friends” display, including actual letters between Kirkbride’s and Dorothea Dix.
• Kirkbride’s annual report to the Board of Managers of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, 1861-1865
• Period photographs and more

Image: Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, circa, 1860

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Prison Camps

by Dr Julius Bonello, MD

Nineteen thousand Confederates died in Union prisons during the war, while 26,000 Federal soldiers died in southern prisons during the war. The most famous of which was in Andersonville, Georgia. This prison was built to house 10,000 soldiers but, at its height, confined over 33,000 prisoners, making it the fifth largest city in the Confederacy.

Prisoners were allowed no means to build shelter. Their daily ration was one cup of cornmeal, three teaspoons of beans and a teaspoon of salt. For every 1,000 soldiers imprisoned there, 793 died. Stating it another way, one prisoner died every 11 minutes. This was almost twice the mortality rate seen in the most infamous northern prison camp, Elmira, New York, where 441 of every 1,000 soldiers died.

Image: Andersonville Prison Camp

Excerpted from: Wellness Directory of Minnesota

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