Learning from the Wounded

Learning from Wounded: The War and Rise of American Medical Science, by Shauna Devine. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2014. x, 372 pp. $39.95 US (cloth). Shauna Devine proposes to relocate roots of modern medical science in America from commonly ascribed influences of late nineteenth-century Germany to traumatic years of 1861-1865, American War. Civil War author explains, especially northern physicians, transformed American medical science. The War created context for most significant medical experience of nineteenth century in United States and in process set American on new course (p. 2). Devine addresses this theme through leitmotif of shared experience memorialized in projects established principally by innovative Surgeon General William A. Hammond. The first of his projects was Army Medical Museum, initiated with Circular No. 2 on May 21, 1862. Through able leadership of men like Joseph Janvier Woodward, John Brinton, and later John Shaw Billings, chaos of deadly camp diseases and devastating combat injuries became what Woodward called, museum of curiosities, but rather a collection that teaches (p. 50). Devine offers convincing testimonials and clear examples of how museum became important institutional foundation for development of investigative medicine (p. 92). If Army Medical Museum made material object pedagogical resource, Devine shows that The Medical and Surgical History of War of Rebellion was its print counterpart. The brainchild of Hammond, it was Joseph K. Bames who would see it through to publication from 1870 to 1888. This massive six-volume compilation of field case studies and reports on everything from regimental illness and injury to hospital management and purveyors' stores caught even attention of Europe. Other medical accounts of wartime had been written before, but never anything on this scale. In December of 1864 young, battletested John Shaw Billings was called to tamer service in Surgeon General's Office. There he soon metamorphosed into de facto librarian that for next thirty years would transform old Surgeon General's Library into truly National Library of Medicine, specialized collection envy of world. Billings reflected passionate desire of younger medical men to recast war's devastation into redemption of meaningful scientific endeavor that could reap permanent benefits. The goal of both museum and library was to create kind of laboratory of object specimens and books that could be used for continuing medical education. It was progressive and ambitious plan that worked. Devine offers some other evidence for role played in developing medical specialization and, more interestingly, in ways in which soldiers-turned-veterans contributed to the medicalization of state (p. 254). War pensions to disabled veterans were mediated through physicians, helping to improve their professional status in civilian community, and for first time, place within federal government an official fiduciary responsibility to those who so valiantly defended it. Despite diligent work of medical elites on gathering, preserving and mounting museum specimens, on collecting books and journals, on requiring and compiling systematic reporting of case studies, and on acquiring tools of trade, there was discernible underbelly of not made clear in Devine's work. Famed surgeon William Keen, for example, doubted if there were half dozen thermometers and hypodermic needles in whole Army of Potomac in war (Medical Research and Human Welfare. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1917, p. 18). In another example, court martial of William A. Hammond in summer of 1864 removed one of best Surgeon Generals ever to grace uniform

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