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(This pencil art is from an unidentified soldier or medical personnel, in a field facility, Corinth, Mississippi. Title: “Dying of Gangrene” from an exhibition of art at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, 1961 and 1962.)

( A copy of the approx. 260 pg book is available in out Sales Gallery.)

“Above 5000 wounded men, demanding instant and constant attention, made a call too great to be met successfully. A much larger proportion of amputations was performed than would have been necessary if the wounds could have received earlier attention. On account of exposures many wounds were gangrenous before the patients reached the hospitals. In these cases delay was fatal, and an operation almost equally so, as tetanus often followed speedily.  Where amputation were preformed, about eight out of ten died. The deaths in Corinth averaged fifty per day for a week after the battle. While the surgeons, as a body, did their duty nobly, there were some young men, apparently just out of college, who performed difficult operations with the assurance and assumed skill of practiced surgeons, and with little regard for human life or limb. In a few days erysipelas broke out, and numbers died of it. Pneumonia, typhoid fever and measles followed, and Corinth was one entire hospital.”

William G  Stephenson, Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army, 1862, New York