IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB001550970

“Mortal in This Season”: Union Surgeons and the Narrative of Medical Modernisation in the American Civil War (2014)

Grant, S.-M. (Author)

Social History of Medicine
Volume: 27, no. 4
Issue: 4
Pages: 689-707

DOI: 10.1093/shm/hku010

Outside Links

PubMed

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

The impact of the American Civil War on medical modernisation is increasingly being recognised, yet the ways in which the Civil War challenged and changed doctors' understanding of their professional role during the war remains underappreciated. By juxtaposing Union doctors' personal and professional responses to the Civil War with the wider public reaction to Union medical care, this paper explores the tensions that arose between the public and the professional perceptions of medicine as these developed on the battlefields of the nation's internecine conflict. It argues that the intersection between the positive and negative narratives of Union medical provision, specifically surgery, established an important discursive space within which Union doctors could negotiate their public and professional status. It finds that the negative narrative, far from a hindrance, was instrumental to the process of medical modernisation by enabling Union physicians to define, defend and develop a more modern medical role.

...More

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001550970/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Tuten, James H.; (2011)
“A Remarkable Case”: A Surgeon's Letter to the Huntington County Globe (/isis/citation/CBB001200545/)

Article Mast, Brian J.; (2011)
Dr. Benjamin Rohrer's Artifact Collection (/isis/citation/CBB001200544/)

Book Smith, William Mervale; Lowry, Thomas P.; (2001)
Swamp Doctor: The Diary of a Union Surgeon in the Virginia and North Carolina Marshes (/isis/citation/CBB000102057/)

Book Thomas, William G.; (2011)
The Iron Way: Railroads, the Civil War, and the Making of Modern America (/isis/citation/CBB001212116/)

Book Rutkow, Ira M.; (2005)
Bleeding Blue and Gray: Civil War Surgery and the Evolution of American Medicine (/isis/citation/CBB000550052/)

Article Riaud, Xavier; (2008)
Dentisterie pendant la Guerre de Sécession (1861--1865) (/isis/citation/CBB000932485/)

Book McGaugh, Scott; (2013)
Surgeon in Blue: Jonathan Letterman, the Civil War Doctor Who Pioneered Battlefield Care (/isis/citation/CBB001213254/)

Article Schlich, Thomas; (2006)
Trauma Surgery and Traffic Policy in Germany in the 1930s: A Case Study in the Coevolution of Modern Surgery and Society (/isis/citation/CBB000670673/)

Article Humphreys, Margaret; (2006)
A Stranger to Our Camps: Typhus in American History (/isis/citation/CBB000670713/)

Article Christen, Arden G.; Christen, Joan A.; (2003)
The Triumph and Tragedy of James Baxter Bean, MD, DDS (1834--1870) (/isis/citation/CBB000932358/)

Article Dyde, Sean; (2011)
The Chief Seat of Mischief: Soldier's Heart in the First World War (/isis/citation/CBB001034268/)

Book Apperson, John Samuel; Roper, John Herbert; (2001)
Repairing the “March of Mars”: The Civil War Diaries of John Samuel Apperson, Hospital Steward in the Stonewall Brigade, 1861-1865 (/isis/citation/CBB000101749/)

Thesis Schurr, Nancy; (2004)
Inside the Confederate Hospital: Community and Conflict during the Civil War (/isis/citation/CBB001561808/)

Book Hilde, Libra Rose; (2012)
Worth a Dozen Men: Women and Nursing in the Civil War South (/isis/citation/CBB001200639/)

Book Wilder, Burt G.; Reid, Richard M.; (2010)
Practicing Medicine in a Black Regiment: The Civil War Diary of Burt G. Wilder, 55th Massachusetts (/isis/citation/CBB001212747/)

Chapter Douglas D. Scott; (2015)
Seventh Cavalry Regimental History (/isis/citation/CBB239505058/)

Article Daniel Goldberg; (2016)
“What They Think of the Causes of So Much Suffering”: S. Weir Mitchell, John Kearsley Mitchell, and Ideas about Phantom Limb Pain in Late 19th c. America (/isis/citation/CBB976637459/)

Article Waggoner, Jesse; (2008)
The Role of the Physician: Eugene Sanger and a Standard of Care at the Elmira Prison Camp (/isis/citation/CBB000774470/)

Book Smith, George Winston; (2001)
Medicines for the Union Army: The United States Army Laboratories during the Civil War (/isis/citation/CBB000102431/)

Book Wooley, Charles F.; (2002)
The Irritable Heart of Soldiers and the Origins of Anglo-American Cardiology: The U.S. Civil War (1861) to World War I (1918) (/isis/citation/CBB000302221/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}