In Hospital and Camp

by Harold Elk Straubing (Editor)

Overview

This anthology tells the fascinating story of how medicine was practiced in military hospitals and in the field during the Civil War. Includes first-person accounts by Louisa May Alcott and Walt Whitman.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811740975
Publisher:	Globe Pequot Publishing
Publication date:	02/01/1993
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
File size:	713 KB

About the Author

Harold Elk Straubing is a writer, editor, and social historian. He has held editorial positions in newspaper, magazine, and book publishing, and has written several books on the Civil War and World War I. Straubing has enjoyed careers in film, radio, animation, and print.

Editorial Reviews

Compiler Straubing has done a truly remarkable service in assembling this set of personal perspectives upon medical care in the Civil War. Seven selections are individuals' reports of firsthand experiences--five of them from the North, two from the South; five by surgeons, two by nurses. The remaining three are literary pieces (which also reflect firsthand experiences) by Louisa May Alcott and Walt Whitman and Frederick Law Olmstead on marine hospital transports. All have appeared in print before, but not all are easily accessible nowadays. Besides Olmstead's description of ship transport of the wounded, of particular interest are an account by a New York surgeon of 13 months of forced service in the Confederate army, an excellent behind-the-scenes look at the Army of the Potomac, a collection of detailed case histories, and an account of a nurse's first day; but the other pieces are also first-rate. Straubing's brief introductions to the selections set the stage for them but do not burden the reader with unnecessary details, while the bibliography directs the reader to further material.

William Beatty