Highlights: American Civil War · Orthopedics and Beyond: The H. Winnett Orr Rare Book Collection at a Half-Century · McGoogan Health Sciences Library Online Exhibits

American Civil War

Hiram Winnett Orr, MD’s fascination with the history of surgery and his service during WWI led him to collect books related to military medicine. Within that collecting category, American Civil War medicine encompassed books pertaining to the unique challenges and changes wrought by the conflict as well as personal narratives, including those of female nurses.

The Hospital Steward’s Manual

Handbook of surgical operations

A manual of military surgery for the use of surgeons in the Confederate States Army

My story of the war

South after Gettysburg

Woodward’s The Hospital Steward’s Manual, 1863, c1862

Title Page

Woodward’s The Hospital Steward’s Manual, 1863, c1862

Image of bandaging a leg

The Hospital Steward’s Manual:

for the instruction of hospital stewards, wardmasters, and attendants, in their several duties: prepared in strict accordance with existing regulations and the customs of service in the armies of the United States of America, and rendered authoritative by order of the Surgeon-General.

Joseph Janvier Woodward (1833-1884)

Orr No. 1458

1863, c1862

Born in Pennsylvania, Joseph Woodward, MD, served in the Office of the Surgeon General during the American Civil War. He prepared pathologic specimens and worked on a medical history of the war. He was an innovator of photo-microscopy (or photomicrography), a technique in which a photograph is taken through a microscope. The technique allowed for the publication of images of microorganisms. Dr. Woodward attended President Abraham Lincoln’s postmortem and was one of the physicians for President James Garfield after he was shot in 1881.

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Handbook of Surgical Operations, 1862

Title Page

Handbook of surgical operations

Stephen Smith (1823-1922)

Orr No. 925

1862

Stephen Smith, MD, attended the Medical Institute of Geneva College, New York, in 1847, at the same time as Elizabeth Blackwell, MD, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States. Dr. Smith finished his medical education at Buffalo Medical College and volunteered at the Union Army’s Central Park Hospital during the American Civil War.

“In his vigorous and productive life of 99 years, Stephen Smith was professor of anatomy and surgery at Bellevue, editor of the New York Journal of Medicine and the American Medical Times, and author of many texts based on his clinical experience. His early surgical accomplishments included a ligation of a common iliac artery and the first Syme amputation at the ankle joint in this country after Carnochan. The Handbook, originally designed as a pocket manual for use on the field went through many editions. He was actively interested in public health, especially in the care of the insane and served on many boards in behalf of that cause.”

Annotation by H. Winnett Orr from A catalogue of the H. Winnett Orr historical collection and other rare books in the library of the American College of Surgeons (1960).

Handbook of Surgical Operations, 1862

Image of instruments to remove bullets

Handbook of Surgical Operations, 1862

Image of instruments for arterial hemorrhage ligatures

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A manual of military surgery for the use of surgeons in the Confederate States Army, 1862

Title Page

A manual of military surgery for the use of surgeons in the Confederate States Army:

with an appendix of the rules and regulations of the Medical department of the Confederate States army

Julian John Chisholm (1830-1903)

Orr No. 1344

1862

Julian Chisholm, MD, was born in South Carolina. During the American Civil War, he established laboratories to produce medical drugs and chemicals such as chloroform and ether, needed by the Confederacy. He developed a chloroform inhaler, which was detailed in A manual of military surgery for the use of surgeons in the Confederate States Army and published four months after the war started at Fort Sumter.

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My story of the war, 1887

Title Page

My story of the war:

a woman’s narrative of four years personal experience as nurse in the Union army, and in relief work at home, in hospitals, camps, and at the front, during the war of the rebellion

Mary A. Livermore (1820-1905)

Orr No. 1394

1887

Mary A. Livermore was a journalist, abolitionist, women’s suffrage and temperance advocate and speaker. Livermore served with the U.S. Sanitary Commission at the Chicago branch during the American Civil War. She later became the co-director of the branch. During the war, Livermore organized aid societies and visited army posts and hospitals. She also helped organize a large fair in Chicago to raise funds to which President Abraham Lincoln donated his personal copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, which was auctioned off for $10,000. She and the co-director toured hospitals in Missouri, Illinois and Kentucky to assess needs and provide supplies and food.

My story of the war, 1887

Portrait of Mary A. Livermore

My story of the war, 1887

Image “The Dying Soldier-The Last Letter From Home”

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South after Gettysburg; letters of Cornelia Hancock from the Army of the Potomac, 1863-1865, 1937

Title Page

South after Gettysburg;

letters of Cornelia Hancock from the Army of the Potomac, 1863-1865

Cornelia Hancock (1840-1927)

Orr No. 1364

1937

Cornelia Hancock traveled to the Gettysburg battlefield in July 1863 with her brother-in-law, a volunteer surgeon. Dorthea Dix, the superintendent of the Union Army nurses, refused Hancock’s assistance because she was too young (under the age of 30) and too attractive to be an army nurse. Hancock went anyway, although she had no formal nursing training. Along with nursing wounded soldiers, she cared for enslaved individuals who escaped from Confederate territory. She worked at the Gettysburg battlefield, the Battle of the Wilderness, and the Siege of Petersburg.

South after Gettysburg; letters of Cornelia Hancock from the Army of the Potomac, 1863-1865, 1937

Image of the “Second Corps Hospital Gettysburg”

South after Gettysburg; letters of Cornelia Hancock from the Army of the Potomac, 1863-1865, 1937

Image of the “Hospital at City Point”

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Orthopedics and Beyond:

Highlights from the H. Winnett Orr Collection .hero{background-image:url(https://exhibits.unmc.edu/files/original/3899/Highlights_hero.jpg);}

American Civil War

The Hospital Steward’s Manual:

for the instruction of hospital stewards, wardmasters, and attendants, in their several duties: prepared in strict accordance with existing regulations and the customs of service in the armies of the United States of America, and rendered authoritative by order of the Surgeon-General.

Handbook of surgical operations

Handbook of Surgical Operations, 1862

Handbook of Surgical Operations, 1862

A manual of military surgery for the use of surgeons in the Confederate States Army:

with an appendix of the rules and regulations of the Medical department of the Confederate States army

My story of the war:

a woman’s narrative of four years personal experience as nurse in the Union army, and in relief work at home, in hospitals, camps, and at the front, during the war of the rebellion

My story of the war, 1887

My story of the war, 1887

South after Gettysburg;

letters of Cornelia Hancock from the Army of the Potomac, 1863-1865

South after Gettysburg; letters of Cornelia Hancock from the Army of the Potomac, 1863-1865, 1937

South after Gettysburg; letters of Cornelia Hancock from the Army of the Potomac, 1863-1865, 1937

Highlights from the H. Winnett Orr Collection