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The Confederate Navy Medical Corps: Organization, Personnel and Actions
McFarland and Company, 2024
The Confederate navy’s medical service was vital in maintaining the fighting strength of the South’s navy and marine corps. Confederate medical officers not only manned war vessels, they staffed navy yards and land-based hospitals, gathered supplies, participated in raids, examined recruits, and even served at defensive shore batteries.
The first book devoted to the medical corps of the Confederate navy provides a carefully researched look at the men, structure, facilities, and activities of the organization. A complete list of men known to have been commissioned as naval officers is included. This thoroughly documented study, based largely on archival material, will appeal to general audiences and scholars alike and is apt to become the standard reference on the topic.
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Matchless Organization: The Confederate Army Medical Deparment
Southern Illinois University Press, 2021
Despite the many obstacles it had to overcome—including a naval blockade, lack of a strong industrial base, and personnel unaccustomed to military life—the Richmond-based Confederate Army Medical Department developed into a robust organization that nimbly adapted to changing circumstances. At its head was surgeon general Samuel Preston Moore, a talented multitasker with the organizational know-how to put in place qualified medical personnel to care for sick and wounded Confederate soldiers. This study investigates how political considerations, personalities, and, as the Civil War progressed, the diminishing availability of human and material resources influenced decision making in the Confederate medical department.
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Villainous Compounds: Chemical Weapons and the American Civil War
Southern Illinois University Press, 2015
This fascinating study shows that numerous chemical weapons were proposed during the Civil War era. A few forward-thinking chemists and numerous ordinary citizens proposed a host of chemical weapons, from liquid chlorine in artillery shells to cayenne pepper solution sprayed from fire engines. Bureaucrats in the war departments of both armies either delayed or rejected outright most of these unusual weapons, but many of the proposed armaments presaged the widespread use of chemical weapons in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Especially timely with today’s increased chemical threats , Villainous Compounds expands the history of chemical warfare and exposes a disturbing new facet of the Civil War.
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Mending Broken Soldiers: The Union and Confederate Programs to Supply Artificial Limbs
Southern Illinois University Press, 2012
This study is the first explore provisions made during the Civl War for amputees in need of artificial limbs. It draws upon numerous sources of archival information to offer a comprehensive look at the artificial limb industry as a whole and in-depth examinations of the companies that manufactured limbs for soldiers and bid for contracts. An intriguing account of innovation, determination, humanitarianism, and the devastating toll of battle, Mending Broken Soldiers shares the never-before-told story of the artificial-limb industry of the Civil War and provides a fascinating glimpse into groundbreaking military health programs during the most tumultuous years in American history.
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Years of Change and Suffering: Modern Perspectives on Civil War Medicine
Coedited by James M. Schmidt and Guy R. Hasegawa
Edinborough Press, 2009
Correcting the pervading myths of Civil War medicine perpetuated by Hollywood dramatizations, this exploration covers how the sick and wounded were treated on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. This collection of essays shows, for example, that there may actually have been too few rather than too many amputations, that there were many advances in the understanding and treatment of diseases and wounds of the nervous system, and that new surgical techniques were used to treat battlefield injuries once thought to be certainly fatal. These topics and more are treated by experts in their respective fields, including medical education, science, invention, neuroscience, and mental health.