Frank R. Freemon

I was recommended this booklet by the staff of Antietam National Battlefield Pry House Field Hospital Museum. It is filled with amazing nuggets about Civil War medicine and its influence on the war. Its best part are the organization (or better the lack of) and the suffering this caused. Penny-wise and pound-foolish. The US was overwhelmed by the demands of war and lacked skilled doctors and ignored European best practices - dearly paid by a large numbers of soldiers who died in vain, never firing a shot against an enemy. The Confederate forces suffered even more as the doctors' skills were further constrained by dwindling supplies. A republic of suffering, indeed. Individuals struggled heroically against bureaucracy, lack of resources and attention to preserve the lives of friend and foe.

I long wondered why the US Atlantic seaboard troops contributed not more to the war. It turns out that a malaria sickness rate of 116 % sapped their strength. Holding on was already an achievement. Constant diarrhoea, the "Tennessee Quickstep", troubled the civil war soldiers much more than their European counterparts. I imagine that the much lower American population densities and the absence of skilled officers played the main role. Interestingly, the civil war soldiers were less afflicted by lice. Reading Bill Wiley's tales about the "graybacks", I would not have assumed this. Some decisions were truly strange: After the battle of Gettysburg, with over 20.000 wounded to care for, only 106 physicians remained behind, the majority of 544 moved south with the army. As Meade's pursuit ended without a follow-up battle, this was a questionable use of scarce medical resources.

The book is not without howlers. The author is not very well versed in military (and even civil war) history. Thus he says on p. 171, that at Gettysburg "an observer could see the entire field of battle" for which the author should be hounded up Culp's Hill and down Little Round Top (The only topological mystery at Gettysburg is that Cemetery Ridge is only steep towards Gettysburg and its stone wall is but one foot high.). The US was also not the first nation to hold elections during wartime, a rather regular occurrence from the Ancient Greeks to the French revolution). Excising the potted history and celebrity medicine from the book and concentrating on organizational aspects and statistics would have improved the book. Nevertheless, this is a fine addition for a civil war library.… (meer)