A sea-change in embalming came with the Civil War, during which there was an outcry for fallen soldiers to be returned to their families for burial.
by David Price
Medical Staff
The American Civil War changed what women were allowed to do. For the first time in our history, women were going to the fields of battle and contributing in countless ways.
When we think of Civil War medicine, we often think of gore, like amputated limbs and bloody gunshot wounds. But these traumatic injuries did not make up the majority of a Civil War surgeon’s daily work. Instead, it was the camp diseases like dysentery and typhoid, infectious disease like smallpox, and – as we saw in this week’s episode of Mercy Street – venereal diseases.
Historian Kathleen Logothetis Thompson explores mental stress, psychological trauma, and suicide among Civil War soldiers.
When Dr. Foster diagnosed Tom with irritable heart, did he essentially diagnose him with the Civil War’s equivalent of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)? Not exactly.
Intrigued by Samuel Digg’s character, our editor asked Dr. Robert G. Slawson, author of Prologue to Change: African Americans in the Civil War Era to write a brief introduction as to what the education and military service of African American physicians would have been like.
Assistant Director of the Heart of the Civil War Heritage Area, Auni Gelles, explores what Maryland was like during the Civil War.
If Hastings really was a Nightingale-nurse, she forgot some of her most important lessons.
Learn more about the doctor that diagnosed “irritable heart.”
