Some personal recollections of the Civil War / by S. Weir Mitchell.

  • Silas Weir Mitchell
Date:
[1905?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Some personal recollections of the Civil War / by S. Weir Mitchell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Army by Harvey E. Brown, and was published by the surgeon- generaks office in 1873, but has been long out of print. The portion which deals with the rebellion is not more than thirty- five or forty pages. It has the dry, technical quality of official records and does no justice to a subject which should tempt some abler pen. When on April 12, 1861, we heard with shame and anger, such as few here can realize, that the flag had been fired on at Fort Sumter, the medical department of the army consisted of 30 surgeons and 83 assistants. Of these 24 resigned to take part in the rebellion and 3 were dismissed for disloyalty; 13 were natives of the South, but stood true to the flag. Two surgeon- generals, owing to death or resignation, succeeded one another rapidly, and finally, soon after the beginning of the war, it was found necessary, owing to age, to permit the surgeon-general, who had difficulty in fulfilling the duties of that office, to retire. He was an old army surgeon; had done excellent work, but was quite unfitted to meet the task which fell upon a totally unpre¬ pared nation. Owing largely to the great pressure made by the sanitary commission and the profession, his place was filled by lift¬ ing from the rank of an assistant surgeon Dr. William A. Hammond. He fell at once into an enormous business spread¬ ing over great spaces of country, increasing in perplexity, and making fresh demands every week, and at last so large that there was expended for ice alone in one year more than the whole amount of money which in peace sufficed for the entire medical service of the army. The organization also demanded complete revision. The surgeons of volunteers had to learn their surgery at bitter cost to many a wounded man. The reg¬ ular army surgeons were little used to seeing grave wounds, and, as the surgeon-general said, there was not an aspect of his work which was not foggy with embarrassments. Whatever else may be thought or said of William A. Hammond, nothing is more sure to me than that he duly saw and grasped a great opportunity; that he served his country as few could have done; that he created the Army Medical Museum; that he saw the
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