Civil War Medicine

Medical care during the Civil War was far below present day standards for medicine. Many doctors had only one year of medical school or they learned their craft by assisting an established physician.  Surgeons apprenticed from one to five years with another surgeon to learn their skills as there were no anatomy or physiology textbooks in the early 19^th century.

Young men who volunteered for service in either the Union or Confederate forces were often farm boys. These boys who had lived in relative isolation were now massed together in training camps with thousands of others. Due to the crowded conditions, bad food, and poor sanitation, many young men died before ever reaching a battlefield.  For an army regiment of one thousand men, there was usually one doctor who had been appointed by the governor of the state represented by the young recruits. The doctor was assisted by an assistant, a medical undergraduate, and a steward who did the clerical work of keeping records, recording diagnoses and prescriptions, mixing the needed prescriptions, and then distributing the prescriptions to the men in camp. Many of the common drugs of the day were arsenic, laudanum, and emetics which are recognized as poisons today. It is recorded that 420,000 men died of disease and diarrhea during the War.

The Sigal Museum has arm splints made of wire and paper and a wooden traction leg splint on display in the special Civil War exhibit. These medical artifacts were the property of Surgeon Dr. Jacob Ludlow, a Lt. Colonel in the 1^st Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. Family tradition says that Dr. Ludlow treated General Ulysses S. Grant after the Battle of Vicksburg.  Mrs. David Ludlow is the donor of these items. In the permanent collection at the Museum, there is a surgeon’s case of varying size saws used for amputations. This case belonged to Dr. Jabez Gwinnup of Belvidere, NJ and was donated to the Sigal Museum by Samuel L. Beatty and Ralph Coopersmith.

Dr. Jonathan Letterman,  a career (U.S.) Army surgeon serving since 1849, is recognized as the Father of Modern Battlefield Medicine. In 1862 following the Battle  of Manassas (known as Bull Run in the North), Dr. Letterman revamped the Army Medical Corps. As head of Medical Services for the Army of the Potomac, he decreed that each soldier bathe once a week for fifteen minutes; fruits and vegetables must be added to the Army diet four times a week; and sanitary facilities must be improved in the camp sites. Dr. Letterman commandeered quartermaster wagons, used to haul ammunition and supplies, and outfitted them as ambulances for the wounded. He trained ambulance drivers and stretcher bearers.  He established what is known today as Triage. Field Dressing or Aid Stations where wounds were bandaged and tourniquets applied were set up near a battlefield. The wounded were then sent to a Field Hospital, often a nearby house or barn, for emergency treatment or surgery (similar to today’s MASH unit.) Bullet wounds could be successfully treated and many soldiers returned to duty. Amputations of arms or legs were common. Wounds to the chest or head were beyond the skill of Civil War physicians. Large hospitals for long term care were established away from the battlefield.

Physicians from both sides treated both Union and Confederate wounded. Following a battle, surgeons would often share medications and supplies with their counterparts on the opposing side. In 1864, when General Ulysses S. Grant was appointed commander of the Union forces, he no longer permitted Union doctors to treat the Confederate wounded.

-Submitted by C.Elaine Greek

• JOHN P. K. KOHLER, ASSISTANT SURGEON: In 1859, he graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in Philadelphia in 1862. In September 1862, he was initially put in charge of all of the hospitals at Camp Curtin, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. On October 26, 1862, he was appointed as an assistant surgeon in the 153rd. Stricken with typhoid fever, he was sent to the XI Corps Hospital in Brooke's Station, Virginia, and then furloughed home on sick leave. He remained on sick leave until just before the Battle of Gettysburg, when, despite not fully recovering from his illness, he reported to duty at a military hospital in Harrisburg, where he remained until he was mustered out of service on July 23, 1863. He never recovered from his bout of typhoid fever, as he died on May 27, 1866, of the disease in Egypt, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania.