Civil War Soldier Trauma in Unexpected Places

By Kathryn Shively Meier

In the Shenandoah Valley and Peninsula Campaigns of 1862, Union and Confederate soldiers faced unfamiliar and harsh environmental conditions—strange terrain, tainted water, swarms of flies and mosquitoes, interminable rain and snow storms, and oppressive heat—which contributed to escalating disease and diminished morale. Using soldiers’ letters, diaries, and memoirs, plus a wealth of additional personal accounts, medical sources, newspapers, and government documents, Meier reveals how these soldiers strove to maintain their physical and mental health by combating their deadliest enemy: nature.
In the following post, Meier explains that soldiers reported traumas from unexpected sources.
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Since World War I, the language available to describe mental afflictions as a result of military service, as well as diagnostics and treatments, has expanded exponentially. The year 1980 saw the introduction of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder into the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Lately, the news has been awash with reports linking physical brain injuries to the symptoms of PTSD, further enhancing our ability to understand and treat the mental repercussions of battle in our armed forces. Yet modern conceptions of soldier mental health do not necessarily translate to clearer understandings of soldier mental trauma in the past. Union and Confederate soldiers described a great deal of their mental suffering as incurred outside of combat. In fact, most Civil War soldiers looked forward to combat as a sporadic and exciting break from the taxing and monotonous day-to-day soldiering that wore down their resolve.

Understanding the mental experience of Civil War soldiers requires entering into an era when physicians lacked sophisticated understandings of the human brain and the contemporary lexicon offered few words to characterize mental health. This is not to say that Civil War soldiers did not provide ample evidence of their states of mind while serving. Soldiers used such terms as “the blues,” loneliness, and homesickness to explain their reasons for devolving into alcoholism, defying direct orders, straggling or deserting, and occasionally ending their lives. They relied upon correspondence with those at home to prevent mental decline, often beginning or ending their own letters with a desperate plea for increased communication with loved ones. Civil War surgeons, responsible for maintaining the overall health of regiments, possessed only a few terms for describing mental disorders, excluding all but the most severe cases. Specifically, U.S. surgeons provided official reports on insanity or “nostalgia,” a potentially fatal case of homesickness with the associated physical problems of fever, stomach ailments, and even death, while Confederate surgeons recorded only nostalgia or mania. All other mental ailments fell through the cracks of official reporting and therefore official care.

Civil War soldiers were quite clear about what burdened their minds, though their descriptions may surprise modern Americans. Indeed, soldiers on both sides pegged environmental circumstances as some of the most serious stressors of the war. Privates through non-commissioned officers, common soldiers rarely had traveled far from home before deploying. That meant the vast majority of them were transported to foreign environments that appeared extremely threatening based on popular notions of disease causation. Lacking conceptions of germ theory or insect-borne illness (theories developed in the 1870s and 80s respectively), mid-century Americans widely believed that a sudden change of location or weather and the air, water, and terrain of certain locales (particularly those of the South) caused life-threatening diseases, such as dysentery, malaria, and typhoid. It was clear to soldiers that disease claimed far more mortalities than combat; indeed, two-thirds of soldier deaths by war’s end would be from sickness rather than wounds. Nature appeared to be the soldiers’ fiercest enemy.

The contemporary disease conception, in turn, influenced soldier ideas about what caused mental debilitation. As described in soldier accounts, leading causes of mental distress included exposure to prolonged bad weather, putrid water, miasmatic swamps, and irritation from insects. Soldiers dreaded falling ill and dying as a fate worse than succumbing to combat wounds. Such a death appeared to deprive them of gloried sacrifice to their Cause. As the men watched their regiments, generally familiar faces from back home, decimated by disease, their loneliness and homesickness compounded. Given that battles were relatively rare in the early years of the war, soldiers had little to do but focus on the misery of camping and marching with flimsy protection from the heat and insects of summer and the bitterness of winter; consequently, they despaired.

Following the war, soldiers reflected in their reminiscences upon the difficult process of becoming hardened to the elements, a process contemporarily known as seasoning. As most veterans wrote memoirs for family consumption, it is apparent that they wished loved ones to acknowledge the mental burden they had suffered, and, in some cases, overcome, while in other cases, still staggered under years later.

One hundred and fifty years after the Civil War, the human brain still presents many mysteries for scientists. As an American people again at war, concern for our military servicepeople continues to motivate us toward better comprehension of how soldiering affects mental health. Just as the recent large numbers of news articles, fictional accounts, and histories regarding PTSD reveal our culture’s current fixation on physical brain trauma, the descriptions Civil War soldiers provided about their own mental health provide us with a window into what nineteenth-century Americans feared most.

Kathryn Shively Meier is assistant professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is the author of  "Nature’s Civil War: Common Soldiers and the Environment in 1862 Virginia".

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This Woman Is the Last Civil War Pensioner Alive

Sam Frizell
May 10, 2014

The last living child of a Civil War veteran, Irene Triplett still receives a monthly pension from the federal government

Irene Triplett, 84, receives a $73.13 monthly pension payment from the Department of Veteran Affairs every month. It’s for her father’s military service—in the American Civil War.

Triplett is the last child of any Civil War veteran to still receive benefits for the conflict that ended a century-and-a-half ago, the Wall Street Journal reports. Triplett’s father, Mose Triplett, was born in 1846 and joined the Confederate forces in 1862 before deserting and signing up with the Union. In the 1920s, he married a women 50 years his junior, who later gave birth to Irene.

16 widows and children of veterans from the 1898 Spanish-American War still receive benefits from the VA. While the last World War I veteran died in 2011, 4,038 widows and children still get monthly payments for their family members’ service in that conflict.

From: time.com

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Determined to Serve: Black Doctors in the Civil War

By Charlene Aaron
Monday, February 18, 2013

COLUMBIA, Md. - This year marks the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War when the nation was divided over the issue of slavery.

During that time, many freed blacks enlisted in the Union Army, including several African American doctors.

Little is known about these brave men, but there is a move to change that.

Prologue to Change
Retired physician Dr. Robert Slawson is fascinated by two subjects: history and medicine.

Slawson spent eight years as a doctor in the Army and 28 years teaching medicine at the University of Maryland. He is particularly interested in medical history, mainly the contributions that African Americans have made.

After completing a research project on medical education prior to the Civil War, Slawson was assured from all of his readings that there were no African Americans in formal medical education in the United States.

But after further study, he found that several blacks had indeed attended and successfully completed medical school. A handful had even served as doctors during the Civil War.

He wrote about his findings in his book, Prologue to Change: African Americans in Medicine in the Civil War Era.

When President Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves in 1863, nearly 200,000 blacks joined the Union Army.

"Of the physicians we've identified serving with the Army, three of them were commissioned officers," Slawson told CBN News. "The other nine were contract surgeons."

"The things they were doing as doctors mostly was taking care of disease," he explained. "They would do examination, take care of people with sickness, give medications."

Alexander T. Augusta
Dr. Alexander T. Augusta was a veteran of the American Civil War and the first commissioned black officer in the U.S. Army. He is also the first black officer to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Augusta was born to free parents in Norfolk, Va. He was taught to read by a preacher, something that was illegal and dangerous in the state.

He dreamed of becoming a doctor, but that seemed almost impossible in the 1800s. He applied to the University of Pennsylvania's medical school, but his application was denied.

When he was unable to gain admittance to an American college of medicine because of his race, Augusta travelled to Canada where he enrolled at Toronto's Trinity College.

After six years there he earned a degree in medicine.

"It's hard for me to even imagine the challenges that they had faced," author and health expert Dr. Michelle Gourdine said.

"It had to be magnitudes harder than those of us who are black doctors now went through," she said.

Gourdine said that the hardships black medical professionals before her faced serve as a great encouragement and example to her and other African Americans.

"On top of it being a very difficult and challenging subject matter they had to understand, but to do that in an atmosphere where you were considered less than, where you were considered to be second rate, second tier, where you did not have all of the resources that you need in order to succeed and then to be able to achieve any way... " she marveled.

John Van Surly DeGrasse
After returning to the United States in 1862, Augusta wrote a direct appeal to President Lincoln to serve as a surgeon in the Army.

He was finally allowed entrance and earned a commission in the Union Army after many roadblocks.

Slawson said Augusta's time in the Army was difficult both on and off the battlefield. Most black surgeons in the war worked in military hospitals or recruiting stations because many white surgeons refused to serve alongside them or under their command on the battlefield.

"He (Dr. Augusta) had two assistant surgeons at the regiment with him and they were white and they rebelled obviously," Slawson explained. "The senior assistant surgeon said 'It's not right. There's no other white man working for an African black man, and I shouldn't have to do it either.'"

Dr. John Van Surly DeGrasse, from Massachusetts, was one exception. He and many of the black doctors in the Civil War were of mixed race.

De Grasse was born June 1825 in New York City. According BlackPast.org, in 1840 at 15 years old DeGrasse enrolled in Oneida Institute in New York.

He later studied medicine at Aubuk College in Paris. De Grasse received his medical degree with honors from the Bowdoin College's Medical School of Maine in Brunswick in May 1849.

He was the second African American to graduate from an American college of medicine.

After volunteering in May 1863, De Grasse received a commission as an assistant surgeon with the 35th United States Colored Infantry. He was one of only three African American doctors to do so.

De Grasse was the only black surgeon to serve in the field with his South Carolina regiment.

Determined to Serve
Little is written in the history books about these African American physicians and their service to the United States of America.

"The powers that be decided that the acceptable physicians were white men, so a lot of the information on African Americans, as well as the early women physicians, people chose not to record it," Slawson said.

Slawson said, however, that one thing is clear about these men.

"Anybody who wanted to go into medicine had to be determined that that's what they wanted to do," he said.

When the war ended, Augusta went on to serve on the staff at Howard University.

De Grasse returned to his practice in Boston. He received a gold-hilted sword from Massachusetts Gov. John A. Andrew in appreciation of his service. He died November 25, 1868.

Modern World Forerunners
Slawson often lectures on Black History. He said he is doing what he can to tell the stories of black doctors in the Civil War, each of whom he said deserves a place in history as forerunners of the modern world.

"I thought they were heroes," he said. "These were people who knew what they wanted, went after it and wanted to serve in the best way they could."

"And they were trained physicians and that was the best service they could give," he said. "I don't see a difference."

Image: Dr. Alexander Augusta

From: cbn.com

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Death and Mourning in the Civil War Era

by Amy Gagnon

Romance, sentiment, and strict moral conscience characterized much of expressive life in New England during the 19th century. Attitudes toward death and mourning practices were particularly important elements in this Victorian age. A central belief was the concept of a “good death,” that is, to die in the home, among family, and with a clear Christian conscience. For the dying, it was a time to give advice to family members, be absolved of sins, say goodbye, and peacefully transition to the hereafter. This time was equally important for the living; it allowed them to wake and mourn the deceased in the home with other family members.

The advent of the Civil War in the mid-1800s transformed the ways people in the North handled the death and mourning of loved ones. Because so many Union soldiers died during the war—and died far from home— the problems associated with properly laying the dead to rest and making sense of the unprecedented scale of human loss had a profound impact on Connecticut’s way of life.

Although Connecticut was one of the smallest states in the Union, its size did not stop large numbers of men from enlisting in the Union army. The state mobilized 30 infantries (including 2 African American regiments), 5 artilleries (both light and heavy), and 2 cavalries. In all, approximately 55,000 Connecticut men went off to war. Troops from the state fought in almost every major and minor battle of the Civil War, and casualties numbered in the thousands. Many more died in Confederate prisons or were executed by the Confederacy.

For those back in Connecticut, frequent funerals became a harsh reminder of the war’s toll. To add to the distress, death on the battlefield or far from home denied the deceased and their families the ideal of the good death. Oftentimes, families were not able to locate or identify the dead, and even when the deceased could be located, efforts to ship them home often failed. Still, many of the fallen were brought home. Trains transporting the dead were met at various stations throughout the state by crowds of hundreds, making once-private family grief a very public affair. For the Connecticut families that could afford to travel to recover their dead, the trip was often stressful. One Connecticut father remarked to a local newspaper that transporting his son’s remains from Washington, DC, to Winsted cost $125.00—almost $2,000 in today’s money—and the trip was not possible without “the personal attendance of some friend, and every step is attended by some incidental expense.”

Until 1864, General Ulysses Grant was lenient about permitting civilians to enter battlefields to retrieve their dead to bring them home for burial. As long as this practice did not hinder troop movement, families were allowed to search for their lost loved ones. Connecticut newspapers often reported—along with locations—“Rolls of Missing Men,” long lists of the dead for family members. After the Battle of Antietam family members and undertakers from all over Connecticut met on the battlefield, where they conducted over 200 funerals for the Connecticut troops killed there. Likewise, Connecticut families traveled to the battlefields of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and the Wilderness to retrieve their dead. It can be difficult for noncombatants today to grasp the impact such direct encounters with the war’s carnage had upon the citizenry.

Finding those who had been buried far from home, also proved difficult. Connecticut soldier Dorrance Atwater, taking his cue from then Civil War nurse Clara Barton, succeeded in obtaining copies of Union soldier interments while employed as a hospital worker. He was able to identify the graves of many Union soldiers who fell in the South so that their families could recover them. (He was later arrested and imprisoned for stealing the records). The rolls were not always accurate, however, and Connecticut newspapers sometimes had to print retractions. For example, in 1863 the Hartford Courant reported the death of Capt. Samuel Fiske of Madison only to retract the report after a witness saw him marching to Richmond as a prisoner.

The War Transforms Funeral Practices
The funeral in the Victorian age was a family event held in the home, with long periods of mourning, but the nature of war-related deaths disrupted such practices. It was at this time that various embalming methods emerged in hopes of returning the dead to their loved ones. But the new methods proved unreliable and rarely effective. When the dead did return to their families, they were often severely decomposed, or worse, not the family member at all. It was also during this time that casket companies began to construct various types of coffins to aid in transport and identification. For example, they made caskets with viewing windows so that the family could more easily identify their dead.

Honoring the Dead through Burial and Monuments
The Civil War era was also the time that local cemeteries began to transform. By the early 19th century, colonial burying grounds and churchyards located in towns and cities were overcrowded and largely ignored. To counter this, and in keeping with romantic sentiments of the Victorian age, the rural cemetery, set away from the town, emerged. Planners designed these cemeteries as park-like settings that encouraged visitors to wander paths, contemplate the solemnity of death, and feel God’s presence in nature. Hartford’s Cedar Hill Cemetery follows this thinking. Even though the first interment at Cedar Hill Cemetery occurred a few years after the Civil War ended, many who had died or served in the war were moved from other burial sites to this new resting place. Those whose remains were re-interred there include industrialist and Civil War arms manufacturer Samuel Colt, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, and General Griffin A. Stedman, Jr. of the 11th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry.

During and immediately following the war, Connecticut towns began to erect monuments to the soldiers who both fought in and were lost in the war. Berlin’s Soldiers’ Monument, erected in 1863, claims to be the first Civil War monument, not only in Connecticut, but in the nation. Today, there are well over 100 Civil War monuments in the state, with memorials still being erected. As recently as 1992, the town of Farmington dedicated a monument honoring the 362 townsmen who served in battle. Most monuments throughout Connecticut are located on town greens or in local cemeteries. They serve not only as a reminder of the Civil War but of the irrevocable changes that the conflict and its death toll left on Connecticut.

Amy Gagnon works as a content developer for ConnecticutHistory.org at Connecticut Humanities and received her MA in Public History at Central Connecticut State University.

From: connecticuthistory.org

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Midwives and the Civil War – Specktown’s Becky Rickert

By Norman Gasbarro, 3-10-11

For a 19th century farmer, having many children was considered a blessing, and boys especially were expected to start working the farm along with their father as soon as they were able.  So, Martin and Betsy set out to have a large family.  Unfortunately for them, their two sons Samuel Rickert (1850-1858) and Henry Rickert (1835-1837) died young – leaving only seven daughters who survived into adulthood.

At the time of the Civil War, five of those daughters had married and several of the husbands were serving in the war.  During the war, four of the daughters gave birth to a total of eight children.  The special responsibility that Betsy had to her daughters was to make sure that they learned the ways and methods of childbirth and that they assumed the responsibility of assisting each other when needed.

The youngest daughter of Martin and Betsy, Hannah Rickert, was born in 1847.  Undoubtedly, her oldest sister Elizabeth Rickert, who was about 18 at the time, was present when her mother gave birth for the last time – as was probably also Susannah Rickert who was 14, and Rebecca “Becky” Rickert, who was only 10.

Rebecca “Becky” Rickert (1837-1918), as previously mentioned, was probably present at the birth of her youngest sister Hannah and was able to assist in some ways at that birth.  During Becky’s early years of life, she suffered from scarlet fever, which left her with some mental incapacity, but not enough that she couldn't continue to assist in the births of her sister’s children and perform tasks in the home that all women were expected to perform.

During the Civil War, she undoubtedly performed the role of midwife or midwife’s assistant at the births of her eight nieces and nephews who were born during the war.

When the mother Betsy Rickert died in 1877, Becky moved in with her sister Hannah and assisted Hannah in the births of her later children.  She became especially attached to Hannah’s oldest daughter Elizabeth “Lizzie” Riegle (1872-1942) to whom she passed on her skills.  It was Lizzie who made midwifery her profession and family oral history confirms that she actually used the title and got paid for her services.

As the 19th century closed, Becky was no longer capable of taking charge in childbirth situations nor was she able to do much more than perform simple household task.  Friends and family members visited her and brought her picture post cards, which she collected, and conversed with her in “Dutch.”  She sat on her rocker, smoked a corn cob pipe, and played with her grand nieces and nephews and other children who came by.  Hannah expressed concern that she would die before Becky and that there would be no one to take care of her.  But that was not true, for if that had happened, Lizzie surely would have kept her and nursed her in her last days.  Becky died about a year before Hannah.

Thus it was that the skills of midwifery were passed down through the generations in Specktown, Lykens Township, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.  Betsy Rickert and her daughters, especially Becky Rickert, performed this invaluable service during the Civil War.  Lizzie Riegle, who learned the skills from her “Aunt Becky,” made her living by charging families $25 for one months service – two weeks before birth, birth, and two weeks after birth.

Although there were country doctors in the late 19th century and early 20th century in the Lykens valley area, and some women chose to rely on their services, the record will show that there was sufficient demand for women who specialized in assisting with childbirth.  The only training they had received was as “apprentices” to elder sisters or to their mothers who also performed the same services.

Today, midwifery is a specialty branch of medicine and is available for those who choose to not have a medical doctor assist in the birthing process.  According to information found on Wikipedia, use of the term “midwife”, common in ancient times, took a long time to return to common usage and that could explain why the Civil War era women did not use it.  In the 18th century and into the 19th century in America, midwifery was associated with witchcraft, particularly because women who practiced it were seen more as “population controllers” because they disseminated birth control information and also performed abortions.  This was the era when it was important to have as many children as possible and anyone who tinkered with that idea was seen as devilish or as a witch.

Excerpted from: civilwar.gratzpa.org

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Contraception: Civil War Style

 From: ask.metafilter.com

Unique research conducted by Clelia Duel Mosher in the late-nineteenth century has remarkably survived to modern times. Dr. Mosher, a researcher at Stanford University, surveyed forty-seven married women about health issues, and among the topics examined were sexual practices and birth control. By no means is the study an exhaustive, scientific one. All of the women were from the North and well-educated, clearly biasing the sample selection, but the study lends an extraordinary rare glimpse inside Victorian life.

For the purpose of keeping the study directly related to the Civil War, I have narrowed the field of forty-seven women to the seventeen who were born before the war. Of these, five women would have been mature and one a teenager by the outbreak in 1861. All but one woman admitted to resorting to the use of some sort of birth control with the most popular methods being condoms, withdrawal, the rhythm method, and douching. Five women, married from nine months to fifteen years, had no children with only one admitting to taking no precautions. The remaining women had from one to eight children. Four of these stated they had children by choice, five by accident, two a combination, and one woman with eight children left it all to chance.

During the Civil War, women were forced into many nontraditional roles. Yet little notice, except for technological advances, has been given to reproductive control during the era. Contraceptive knowledge became public before the war, and with a growing awareness of science and choice, demand came about for better methods that paved the way to modern birth control.

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History of Coffins & Caskets

From: agraveinterest.blogspot.com

The word coffin comes from the Old French cofin and from the Latin cophinus, which translates into basket. The word was first used in the English language in 1380.  A coffin is defined as a box or chest for the display/burying of a corpse. When used to transport the deceased, a coffin may also be referred to as a pall.

Coffins have been used since ancient Egypt when a body was mummified and placed in a sarcophagus before being buried in pyramids.  In Europe, around 700, the Celts began fashioning burial boxes with flat stones.  But the majority of people throughout time have been buried wrapped in a shroud, or in a wooden box.

A casket is defined as a fancy coffin by Merriam-Webster. The word casket is used mainly in North America; a casket has four sides, a top and bottom, (rectangular shaped.) A coffin has six sides, with a top and bottom, (hexagonal shaped.)

As Nathaniel Hawthorne put it in 1863, “Caskets! A vile modern phrase, which compels a person ... to shrink ... from the idea of being buried at all.”

During the Civil War, so many coffins were needed to transport the dead that the mass production of coffins began and the casket industry developed by the late 19th century.

Coffins/caskets have been made from wood, cast iron, steel, fiberglass, glass, bamboo, wicker, wool, even gold. Ornamental trim could be carved from whalebone, elephant ivory or precious metals.

Reusable Coffin
In 1784, Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II declared that reusable coffins were to be used in order to save wood. The coffins were equipped with a trap door on the bottom that would drop the body into the hole and allow the coffin to be pulled back up and used for another funeral. Due to public outcry, the law was cancelled within the first six months.

1850 Cast Iron Coffin
Cast-iron coffins were made from the 1850’s through the 1870’s.  Almond Fisk patented the first cast-iron casket in 1848.  It was shaped like a sarcophagus, weighed over 300 pounds, and cost up to $100. Wooden coffins sold for $1 to $3.00, (around $40 to $60 today.) Unfortunately, Fisk’s manufacturing building burned to the ground in 1849.  Fisk died in 1850, penniless, having mortgaged his patented rights to John G. Forbes in order to get loans to continue building his metallic burial boxes. Forbes and his family restructured the company, changed the name, and continued making the metallic burial cases until 1888 when the company folded.

Grant's Iron Casket
But metal coffins had caught on with wealthy families. The affluent purchased them to deter grave robbers. In 1885 General Ulysses S. Grant was buried in an iron casket that was created in New York.

Casket with Escape System:Rope Attached to Bell
The fear of being buried alive was rampant in the late 1700 and 1800’s.  This was due in part to the cholera epidemic and rumors of live burials that had occurred.  Edgar Allen Poe’s story “The Premature Burial” didn’t help matters.  In response to these fears a safety coffin was developed.  The coffin would include a mechanism that allowed the occupant to signal that s/he had been buried alive.  Usually it was a cord attached to a bell.

Steel Casket
At the turn of the 20th Century, wooden caskets were still the most popular.  But by the 1960’s, steel casket production had grown to 50% of the market.  By the 1970’s, nearly two-thirds of all caskets were metal.

Today, it is mainly stainless steel caskets that are used. Caskets are available in 16 – 18 – 19 (a combination of 18 & 20 gauge) – 20 and 22-gauge steel.  Metal coffins can also be made in bronze and copper.  The less expensive metal caskets are made of the higher gauge of stainless steel.

Cloth Covered Casket
Cloth covered caskets are made from pressed wood, softwoods or corrugated fiberboard.  Caskets that are cloth covered and less expensive than hardwood or steel caskets.

Maple Casket
With the interest in cremation growing, and the beliefs of many religious groups, wooden coffins continue to have a place in our burial traditions.  Hardwood caskets are made of solid wood.  Selected woods include mahogany, walnut, cherry, maple, birch, oak, pine, poplar and willow.  Other wood can also be used such as ash, elm, cedar, and redwood.  A veneer-finished casket is less expensive than one of solid wood.

Sealing Gaskets
But remember that regardless of any claim, even if the casket has a gasket that seals, it will not protect the body from decay, or protect the public from disease.  In fact, an airtight coffin can cause the body to liquefy.  A coffin that permits air to pass through, such as a wooden box, allows for skeletal remains.

Regardless of the type of coffin/casket or lack of burial container, a burial, cremation or committal ceremony is a way for the living to honor the deceased.  It is a chance to say a final goodbye and pay tribute to a life well lived. And that is what truly matters.

Image: Grant's iron casket

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Civil War Doctor: Modern-day Physician Explores Battlefield Practices Of Predecessors

February 21, 1990
By Janette H. Rodrigues

GLOUCESTER — Monday through Friday, Col. Adrian Wheat, M.D., is a physician with the Army Medical Corps. On weekends, he steps back into the past and dons the uniform of a Civil War surgeon.

Wheat, who is chief of surgery at McDonald Army Hospital at Fort Eustis, is a Civil War re-enactor. Approximately six times a year he and others can be found on a mock battlefield, wearing the Confederate gray or sometimes Union blue, bringing the War Between the States to vivid life.

A collector of Civil War medical artifacts, Wheat says he became interested in this historical period when he was a small boy.

He missed out on participating in activities during the Civil War Centennial in the 1960s, so when he got the chance to become a re-enactor he took it.

"I joined a unit when I was in medical school at the University of Tennessee."

He likes to portray the role of an assistant surgeon in the Confederate Army because it allows him to participate fully in re-creating the historical period. "It gives me a reason for being in the action."

While a Confederate Army regiment - a military unit of about 100 men - was assigned two medical officers, a chief surgeon and his assistant, it was the latter who tended the wounded on the battlefield.

"When troops got ready for a battle it was the assistant surgeon's task to accompany the soldiers to the front."

In his research of Civil War doctors, Wheat has learned that an assistant surgeon carried with him only simple medical instruments, wooden splints and anesthetic drugs.

Although there were no major scientific advances made y surgeons during the war, improvements were made on standard medical procedures, says Wheat.

"They learned by trial and error."

A surgeon's job during the Civil War was focused more on saving soldiers from disease than wounds.

For every man that died from battle wounds, two men died from illnesses brought on by infection.

"It was an improvement over the Revolutionary War," he says.

According to Wheat, the cause of death ratio was 12 to 1 with disease killing more soldiers than anything else.

Some of the medicines used during that period in time, from 1861 to 1865, were more harm than help. "Sometimes it was a blessing in disguise when they ran out" of medical supplies, says Wheat.

Helpful drugs like laudanum, a solution of opium in alcohol, were useful. But other concoctions, like drastics, were not.

Drastics, were used to purge a patient's system. These medicines contained ingredients like lead, mercury and arsenic, that are now known to be poisonous.

The most common diseases soldiers suffered from were dysentery and malaria.

Medical personnel never became great military leaders. The highest rank they could reach was that of major.

Wheat says he prefers portraying a captain.

"It's more flexible," he says. The higher ranking officer's job was more administrative; the chief surgeon's responsibilities included managing a support staff of about 20 people including such medical personnel as medics, nurses, orderlies and litter bearers.

Wheat attends annual events above and below the Mason-Dixon Line, the boundary line between Pennsylvania and Maryland that separated the North from the South.

Every Memorial Day he and fellow re-enactors set up a military hospital in Yorktown, which as well as being a Revolutionary War site is also an area of Civil War activity.

Some day when he retires, Wheat says he hopes to finish writing a book he has been researching on Confederate surgeons.

"I've been working on this book for years," he says, "I'm in no big hurry to finish it."

Wheat says finishing the book has turned into a long-term project because he enjoys doing the research so much.

The doctor lives in Gloucester Point with his wife, Marla, a clinical social worker, and their daughters, Courtney, who attends the University of Virginia, and Brittney, a Gloucester High School student.

From: articles.dailypress.com

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