Richmond's Wartime Hospitals

This history of Civil War medical practice examines the harrowing circumstances faced by doctors and hospitals in Virginia's capitol.

The Civil War erupted toward the end of a period known as "the medical Middle Ages," before modern knowledge of bacteria and antiseptics. Doctors of the time, who were considered fully trained after only two-years of study, had few diagnostic tools beyond their own reckoning at hand.

While medical science saw significant advances during the Civil War, hospit...