He described not just what he had witnessed in 1863, but what he had seen in his dreams for many nights since:
Bushrod James, for example, was a Philadelphian civilian who arrived at Gettysburg as a volunteer in the days after the battle. What was the effect on Civil War surgeons of their war service? In his pioneering book, Doctors in Blue, Charles Adams wrote that “the number who sickened and resigned, only to die at home, or who carried with them for years the curse of chronic invalidism, will forever remain unknown.” But perhaps now – sixty years after Adams’s book, we might be able to find in at least Union pension records and in memoirs some answer to the question of how war service affected doctors.Įxamples of men traumatized by what they saw and did can be found throughout the sources.
What memories haunted these three surgeons of the 1st Division, 9th Corps, after treating the massive casualties during the Siege of Petersburg? How did the experiences affect their lives?
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