Care of the sick and wounded in the Union army, 1861 to 1865 Item Type text; Thesis-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Robbins, Lucia Greenman Allyn, 1913- Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 28/09/2021 00:46:08 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/317943 CARE OF THE SICK AND WOUNDED IN THE UNION ARMY 1861 to 1865 by Lucia Allyn Robbins A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS In the Graduate College ; THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 1 9 6 6. STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This thesis has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this thesis are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author. SIGNED 4i.it* t- I^A^Xlnxy APPROVAL BY THESIS DIRECTOR This thesis has been approved on the date shown below: TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ................... iv NEW DEMANDS ON AN OLD SYSTEM . ........... 1 AMERICAN MEDICINE IN TRANSITION .................. 23 THE NATION'S CONCERN WITH THE ARMY'S HEALTH ..... 44 BULLETS AND FEVER ALONG THE RIVERS .......... 68 The Tennessee ................. 68 The Chickahominy ................ 84 DUTY WEARS A CHANGING F A C E ...................... 98 THE HARSH LESSON OF REALITY . ............. 128 REFERENCES .................................... 150 ill ABSTRACT The Civil War began with a lack of military preparation that was nowhere more evident than in the medical department of the army. In peace time , this small group of doctors had been directly respon­ sible to the Surgeon General and assigned by him to the scattered military posts as needed. They had never been responsible for more than the care of a regiment and there were no regulations or procedures to guide them when they were made medical directors of the new volun­ teer armies. In the first year of the war it quickly became evident that the simple organization for medical care that existed was completely in­ adequate to preserve the health and care for the wounds of an army of half a million men. Among the recruits, ignorant of the measures needed to maintain healthy camps, and frequently commanded by incompetent officers the sick rate became so great as to seriously impair the fight­ ing strength of the Union. In the early battles care of the wounded was improvised on the spot. There was no organized personnel to care for them on the field, means to evacuate them to the rear, suitable hospital facilities to receive them, or adequate medical supplies for treatment. Most of the experiences of the sick and wounded in the Civil War were dismal ones. Most basic of the reasons for this was the level iv of medical practice of the period. Scientific medicine was in its infancy, progress in the understanding of the causes of disease and an enlight­ ened approach to treatment had largely been made in Europe, and few American doctors belonged to what was known as the "new school of . medicine." In the United States the status of the doctor was at its low­ est point in the history of American medicine. The public health move­ ment which had begun to develop in the mid-century as a part of the philanthropic effort toward human improvement was interrupted by the war before much progress had been made. But many of the men and women who had been active in this movement became leaders in the civilian Sanitary Commission which gave inestimable aid to the medi­ cal corps throughout the conflict. An acquaintance with the medical concepts of the period is so important in understanding the problems of the Civil War doctor that I have devoted a chapter to this subject, using as sources such eminent historians of medicine and public health as Richard H. Shryock, M. G. Seelig, George Rosen, and C.-E. A. Winslow. I have given less attention to the work of the Sanitary Com­ mission which has been so thoroughly covered in George Worthington Adam's study published under the title Doctors in Blue (New York: Henry Schumah, 1952). The other basic factor in the failure to provide adequate care for the sick and wounded of this war was the lack of strong centralized direction of the total war effort. From both doctors and civilians, men of foresight and genius appeared upon the medical scene and worked out plans and methods for field hospital care, organization of medical per­ sonnel, evacuation of wounded to the rear, and the maintenance of medical supplies. However, authorization of the systematized care pror- posed was not secured until the war was nearly over and they were only able to implement their new ideas in spotty instances. Individualism was a dominant characteristic of the Civil War. Troops, nurses, doc­ tors, officers, and congressmen each had his own ideas. Personal antagonism, political preference, the independent attitude of the states, old-line army attitudes all conspired to deprive the soldier of the care it would have been possible to give him. The great contribution to army medicine of the Civil War was the record of the suffering, the trials and the errors compiled in The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion upon which I have relied for so much of my information. The British experience in the Crimea and the American in the Civil War were the first histories of war­ time medicine ever to be compiled. While their medical data became only of historical interest on the advent of the sciences of bacteriology, immunology, and epidemiology the Civil War experience in camp sanita­ tion and hygiene, military health hazards, hospital construction and management, the organization of field hospitals and dressing stations was preserved for use and implementation in both World Wars I and II. Only in these later wars did the.work of the great Civil War medical administrators gain recognition. NEW DEMANDS ON AN OLD SYSTEM Surgeon William King, Medical Director, rode with the Others of General McDowell1 s staff on the road from Centreville to Manassas ■ Junction Virginia on a hot July twenty-first in 1861. A Union army of some thirty thousand men marched behind them, a conglomeration of volunteer state militia only slightly leavened by a scattering of regular I ' , army units. The volunteers marched in a recrudescence of the war hys­ teria with which they had answered President Lincoln1 s call for troops in April. The boredom and discomfort of four months in makeshift camps lay behind. They were on the offensive in Confederate territory and ahead, so they believed, lay a glorious victory which would quickly end the re­ bellion of the seceded southern states against the Union. The brash optimism of the volunteer troops was not shared by the staff officers of the regular army. General McDowell was well aware of the army's deplorable unpreparedness for battle, the inadequate staff, the lack of all kinds of supplies, the troops' ignorance of battlefield deployment. But in what Catton calls the nation's "bright innocence" 2 1. W. S. King, "Report of Events Connected with the First Bull Run Campaign," in J. j. Woodward et al (eds.), The Medical and Surgi­ cal History of the War of the Rebellion (6 vols., Washington, 1870-1888), Medical, I, Appendix, p. 2. Hereafter cited as Woodward et al (eds.), The Medical and Surgical History .. Rebellion. 2. Bruce Catton, This Hallowed Ground (New York, 1956), p. 21. public and political pressure was forcing an engagement the outcome of which was viewed as entirely unpredictable by professional military O judgm ent. The Civil War, though long foreseen and feared, was undertaken with the same lack of preparation with which the previous wars, in the 4 nation's military history had begun. At the beginning of 1861 the regu­ lar army of the United States numbered some. 15,000 officers and men scattered across the country as meagre.garrisons for coastal defense installations and for the Indian outposts of the west. Despite the dis­ persal of troops over great areas the Medical Corps was limited to a Surgeon General and one hundred and eleven d octor s - - thirty surgeons and eighty-three assistant"surgeons—all, of necessity, attached to the general staff and moved from post to post as needed. The defection of twenty-four surgeons to the Confederacy left the Medical Corps of the Union army with eighty-nine doctors experienced in the procedures of army medicine The volunteer state militia which responded to the call of April 15 carried one surgeon on the roster of each regiment. The presidential proclamation of May 3, calling for forty regiments for two years of 3. Ibid. p. 44. 4. Francis R. Packard > History of Medicine in the United States (2 vols. New York, 1931), I, p . 637 5. Harvey F. drown. The Medical Department of the United States Army from 1775 to 1873 (Washington, 1873) , p.