The Healers: A Civil War Saga

The Civil War was like no other war fought previous to or since its time. Among its demands it required a vast revision in medical practice suitable to the damage inflicted on the American people and the demands for care brought by the war. When the Civil War began, medical practitioners had little experience with the issues posed by the vast armies that marched across the land. In addition, they had no knowledge of germ theory or antiseptic practices. Both discoveries were still years away. At the time, over 60 medical schools existed in America before the war, and apprenticeships with established physicians were also common. However, education in the healing arts was limited; the usual course of study in a medical school consisted of two terms of six-month lectures, with the second term often being a repeat of the first. Nursing education was even more severely limited. Change was warranted and it did occur. Under the guidance of Dr. David Letterman, chief medical officer of the Army of the Potomac, and over the course of the rest of the years of the war, lasting changes in practice were put into effect. These improvements in care form the basis of modern battlefield medicine. In this book we follow Letterman and his associates from Antietam to Fredericksburg, at Chancellorsville and at Gettysburg. At each of these places the practice of battlefield medicine is advanced to emerge as a modern response, where possible, to the ravages of war.