Learning from the Wounded by Shauna Devine

“Many physicians realized early on that their limited knowledge of the body and disease was inadequate to care for the thousands of patients created by the war. But as the war went on and physicians gained experience performing surgeries or studying diseases, they also developed new ways to produce and record knowledge about the causes, treatment, management, and prevention of disease. These included dissection, microscopic analyses of organs and tissues to produce finer distinctions about disease, chemical investigation into disease processes, therapeutic trials, and medical experimentation. In the process, Civil War physicians, especially northern physicians, transformed American medical science. The Civil War created the context for the most significant medical experience of the nineteenth century in the United States and in the process set American medicine on a new course.”

-Shauna Devine, 2014