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Lädt ... Gangrene and Glory: Medical Care during the American Civil War (2001. Auflage)von Frank R. Freemon
Werk-InformationenGangrene and Glory: Medical Care during the American Civil War von Frank R. Freemon
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This unusual history of the Civil War takes a close look at the battlefield doctors in whose hands rested the lives of thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers and at the makeshift medicine they were forced to employ. A medical doctor and a credentialed historian, Frank R. Freemon combines poignant, sometimes horrifying anecdotes of amputation, infection, and death with a clearheaded discussion of the state of medical knowledge, the effect of the military bureaucracy on medical supplies, and the members of the medical community who risked their lives, their health, and even their careers to provide appropriate care to the wounded. Freemon examines the impact on major campaigns--Manassas, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Shiloh, Atlanta--of ignorance, understaffing, inexperience, overcrowded hospitals, insufficient access to ambulances, and inadequate supplies of essentials such as quinine. Presenting the medical side of the war from a variety of perspectives--the Union, the Confederacy, doctors, nurses, soldiers, and their families--Gangrene and Glory achieves a peculiar immediacy by restricting its scope to the knowledge and perceptions available to its nineteenth-century subjects. Now available for the first time in paperback, this important volume takes a hard, close look at a neglected and crucial aspect of this bloody conflict. Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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 Google Books — Lädt ...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)973.7History and Geography North America United States Administration of Abraham Lincoln, 1861-1865 Civil WarKlassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt: (3.25)
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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. (