Doctors attempting to deal with the carnage wrought by the Civil War faced more difficult challenges than the sheer number of the wounded. Fought at the very end of what is known as "the medical Middle Ages," the Civil War predated modern knowledge of bacteria and antiseptics. Doctors, who were then deemed fully trained after only a two-year course of study, had few diagnostic tools beyond their own reckoning at hand.While medical science enjoyed several advances during the Civil War, the doctors and hospitals in the Southern states faced overwhelming casualties with few supplies and inadequate personnel. By focusing on facilities in Virginia’s capitol, Mrs. Calcutt illustrates how exhausted resources rapidly defeated southern doctors’ heroic efforts.
Richmond’s Wartime Hospitals covers the more than fifty hospitals located in Richmond during the Civil War period, including each facility’s location, dates of operation, and surgeon in charge. Where archival information is available, Mrs. Calcutt includes detailed descriptions of the buildings, first-person accounts of day-to-day operations, and other historical anecdotes.
About the Author
Rebecca Barbour Calcutt has completed extensive studies in colonial and Revolutionary-era history. She has a bachelor of arts, with honors in history, from the University of Maryland and a master’s degree in antebellum southern history from the College of Charleston. She has served as a docent for the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History and is a licensed tour guide for both the city of Charleston and Middleton Place Plantation. A resident of Charleston, South Carolina, she is also the author of South Carolina’s Revolutionary War Battlefields: A Tour Guide ($12.95 pb).
RICHMOND’S WARTIME HOSPITALS
By Rebecca Barbour Calcutt
224 pp. 5½ x 8½
28 b/w photos Map Appendixes Notes Biblio. Index
ISBN: 1-58980-297-7 $22.00 Hardcover
13-Digit ISBN: 9781589802971
© 2005 HealthNewsDigest.com