Examining Civil War Medicine

The history of Civil War Medicine in the public sphere is one of great misunderstanding. Popular knowledge places Civil War Medicine in the same realm as butchery. Conversely, the academic field of Civil War Medicine History has, for decades, examined the true nature of the field. Historians first studied the evolution of the bureaucratic elements surrounding medicine during the war, studying the development of both Union and Confederate medical departments. Subsequently, historians have studied medical procedures and science from the era as well as nursing, the great organizers and modernizers of medicine, the medical treatment of slaves and freedmen who served in Union Army and the government entities that helped create medical departments, capable of treating millions. Only recently, however, historians have started to examine the effect the war itself had on the modernization of American Medicine. 

Medicine was modernized during the American Civil War, purely out of necessity. The minimal medical branch of the pre-war United States Army was forced to handle an exponentially growing force. The Confederacy, while creating an entirely new military, created its own medical capabilities. Casualties were unprecedented during the four-years of heavy fighting, with thousands suffering catastrophic wounds in just hours of fighting. Millions of soldiers suffered heavily from disease, with many thousands of those suffering, dying from their ailments. At the First Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861, the ineptitude of a poorly organized medical arm for the Union Army showed. Some hospitals filled with casualties, beyond their capabilities to treat while some received no patients at all. Retreating soldiers used the ambulances as carriages to safety and wounded soldiers suffered for days in summer heat, dying slowly as they awaited care that should have been the duty of those same ambulances.  

Poor hygiene in camp, costing thousands of American lives and the poor battlefield performance of the medical leaders, pushed American women to partake in political persuasion. The eventual United States Sanitary Commission put in place Surgeon General William Hammond who rapidly reorganized the military. His quick work and change of medical procedure have endeared him to historians as a man of great resolution. Many have labeled him and his bureaucrats as the major components, who changed the medical field, modernizing it and saving thousands of lives. On the other hand, the surgeons who worked is battlefield conditions and military encampments have been overlooked. Many surgeons have been painted as poorly trained, men and women of an outdated scientific and medical system. They have often been deemed as incapable of comprehending true, scientific depth. Of course, the premise of this is unfounded. 

The thousands of surgeons who enlisted in the forces of both Union and Confederate ranks, have left behind a wealth of knowledge. Their papers show medical professionals who were deeply curious about science and embedded in their medical careers. Civil War surgeons graduated from the battlefield and many of them carried forward into prominent medical careers. These surgeons are the aim of this dissertation topic. The major question at hand is why were these medical professionals able to modernize Civil War medicine, and later, American medicine? Outside of the grasp of larger government organization, many of these surgeons had little contact with the recently organized medical records and groundbreaking scientific studies, rather, they learned through their work in the field. They were scientifically inclined, working in a rather unrewarding career, focused on not only helping but satiating scientific curiosity.  

There is a hole in the historiography. While the Civil War as a key watershed in the movement towards a modern medical field has been examined, the effect the war had on individual surgeons has not. It wasn’t simply the grand organization of men like William Hammond and Samuel Stout who helped these surgeons find success during the war. It was the experienced, trained medical professionals who used the war as a learning experience. Countless numbers of stewards, nurses and other workers used the war as a catalyst for a medical career, after the war itself. 

There is a great wealth of information on the medical aspect of the American Civil War. Tens of thousands of medical records were organized into an exhaustive, official, history from the war titled Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. Monstrous collections of papers, documents and specimens were stored at places like the Otis Historical Archives at the National Museum of Health and Medicine. The greatest wealth of knowledge, however, is scattered throughout a tremendous array of small archives, university libraries and various museums that hold the manuscripts, diaries and written works from hundreds of surgeons, on either side of the conflict. This is to serve as the greatest driver of the dissertation topic, where the contribution to medicine, by the individual surgeons, serve as the greatest focus. The exhaustive study of these manuscripts and papers will add to the larger body of knowledge that will compose this dissertation. These are familiar to me through previous work, where I have countless notes and scans of documents from many medical workers of the war.  

This will be removed from the study of medical departments, leaders, women, minorities and science that has composed the field. Rather, the look at individual contribution, by physicians and the conditions these doctors came from, worked in and the experience gained is a region that has yet to be fully examined. This is an important switch, away from the larger emphasis on governing bodies or leadership, as the foundation for success. The individual effort, in a concerted way, is the true value in the creation of success, as this dissertation will aim to show. The major hope is to uncover the true nature of the many medical professionals and surgeons and the true modernity of their standing as scientists and medical professionals. Furthermore, the experiential aspect of the war and how it drove the careers once the war was finished will hopefully show a transition to a more modernized field of American medicine.