The Medical Community

"I Acted From Principle: William Marcellus McPheeters, Confederate Surgeon" by Cynthia Dehaven Pitcock and Bill J Gurley

"Memories of a Hospital Matron" by Emily Virginia Mason

"Recollections of a Rebel Surgeon, and Other Sketches: or, In the Doctor's Sappy Days" by Ferdinand Eugene Daniel

"Our Family Physician" by Joseph R Haw

What was it like to be in a hospital during the Civil War? With the daunting numbers of sick and wounded, how was medicine practiced? During the Civil War, disease ravaged the Northern and Southern forces, and as the conditions worsened during the war, so too did the death these microbes served. On top of these waves of diseases that the war conditions unleashed, the medical community was utterly unprepared for the death and suffering the conflict caused.

The men and women who worked in these environments leave testimony not only to their hardships but their perseverance in the face of such death and destruction. "The expression of American personality through this war," Walt Whitman wrote, " is not to be looked for in the great campaign, & the battle-fights. It is to be looked for . . . in the hospitals, among the wounded."

Our collection provides a window into this world, with first-hand accounts from doctors, nurses, soldiers, and civilians reminiscing of their experiences with medicine in hospitals, homes, and battlefields throughout the South.