The Confederate Medical Department

A medical professional himself, Dr. Hasegawa, a former board member of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, has written extensively on the Civil War, including books on chemical weapons and efforts to develop prosthetics. In this volume he looks at the development of the Confederate Army's Medical Department. This was no easy task, because department records were mostly destroyed in the fires that swept Richmond when Lee's army pulled out, yet Hasegawa has produced a very good study.

Hasegawa gives us a good look at the efforts of a very small group of former U.S. Army surgeons, and some civilians, to create an effective medical service. Beginning with almost nothing, these men, despite some squabbing over seniority, developed an efficient medical service, addressing shortages of pretty much everything by implementing local production of some medicines, instruments, and supplies, which supplemented material captured by the armies or smuggled in from abroad, and even from the North. The result was a fairly efficient system for treating and evacuating sick and wounded men from the fronts to a network of hospitals, many operated by civilian volunteers.

Essentially an organizational history, this is an outstanding treatment of a very neglected side of the Confederate war effort, and will primarily be of interest to the specialist in Civil War history or military medicine.

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