Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T01:40:40.052Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

14 - Civil War Health and Medicine

from Part II - Managing the War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2019

By
Shauna Devine
Edited by
Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University
Get access

Summary

Dr. Brown-Séquard lectured about various forms of wound trauma, injuries to the nerves, spinal cord trauma and fracture, heart disease, tetanus, and epilepsy – a range of conditions that were afflicting the Union troops. He discussed the challenges of diagnosing and treating these conditions, the possibilities of experimental medicine and blood transfusions as a cure, and the groundbreaking research of Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, a leading researcher and physician at the newly formed Turner’s Lane Hospital – all of which would hopefully provide answers on better managing the conditions of war trauma. This 1864 lecture, one of many during the war, which was attended by more than 100 physicians in the DC area, highlights the unique training and learning environment that was created to manage the quantity, variety, and impact of the diseases encountered during the Civil War.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the American Civil War , pp. 268 - 292
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Key Works

Adams, George Worthington. Doctors in Blue: The Medical History of the Union Army in the Civil War (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1952).Google Scholar
Bollet, Alfred. Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs (Tucson, AZ: Galen Press, 2002).Google Scholar
Burnham, John C. Healthcare in America: A History (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015).Google Scholar
Bynum, W. F. Science and the Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).Google Scholar
Codell Carter, K. The Rise of Causal Concepts of Disease (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003).Google Scholar
Cunningham, H. H. Doctors in Gray: The Confederate Medical Service (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1958).Google Scholar
Devine, Shauna. Learning from the Wounded: The Civil War and the Rise of American Science (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).Google Scholar
Flannery, Michael. Civil War Pharmacy: A History (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2017).Google Scholar
Green, Carol C. Chimborazo: The Confederacy’s Largest Hospital (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Humphreys, Margaret. Marrow of Tragedy: The Health Crisis of the American Civil War (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013).Google Scholar
Rothstein, William. American Physicians in the 19th Century: From Sects to Science (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985).Google Scholar
Sappol, Michael. A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and Embodied Social Identity in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).Google Scholar
Stowe, Steven. Doctoring the South: Southern Physicians and Everyday Medicine in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century South(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Tomes, Nancy. The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women and the Microbe in American Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).Google Scholar
Warner, John Harley. Against the Spirit of the System: The French Impulse in Nineteenth-Century American Medicine (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×