Learning from the Wounded

Archival Summary & Scope

The Civil War's 750,000 fatalities were two-thirds disease-related, exposing a gravely unprepared American medical profession. Shauna Devine reveals how, despite unregulated training and scarce resources, Union army physicians transformed medicine. Through extensive postmortems, wound care, and innovative experimentation, these doctors pioneered advancements in dissection, microscopy, and infectious disease research. Devine demonstrates how their crisis-driven innovations reshaped northern medical education and established the foundations of modern health science.