Divided by Conflict. 
Three sites, thousands of stories.
National Museum of Civil War Medicine
Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum
Pry House Field Hospital Museum
Upcoming Programs
Charlottesville General Hospital at the University of Virginia
John Lustrea will talk with historian Amelia Wald about her research on the general hospital set up at the University of Virginia during the Civil War.
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The Life of Civil War Doctor Edward Stonestreet with Clarence Hickey
Director of Interpretation Jake Wynn will talk with Living Historian and NMCWM Member Clarence Hickey about the incredible life of Dr. Edward Stonestreet.
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One Vast Hospital – Civil War Walking Tour in Downtown Frederick
Walk in the footsteps of doctors, nurses, and civilians who cared for 8,000 wounded soldiers in Downtown Frederick with Museum docent Brad Stone
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Germ Theory from Antiquity to the Antebellum Period
Although germ theory hadn’t been discovered by the start of the Civil War, many throughout history had gotten closer than you might think.
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Confederate Use of Anesthesia in the Civil War
Kyle Dalton concludes the two part series about anesthesia in the Civil War by focusing on the Confederate experience with it.
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![This account from the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion demonstrates the medical chaos of the first year of the Civil War and the physical toll it took on the medical professionals trying to restore order.
It comes from Surgeon N.R. Derby of the US Army. He was assigned to take command of a makeshift hospital in the unfinished Phelps County Courthouse in Rolla, Missouri in September 1861. The terrible scene he discovered upon arrival in that village was one that was repeated across the the theaters of war that fall. Derby sought to create order from the chaos and it took a heavy toll on his own health.
“Being directed, September 23rd [1861], to open a general hospital at that place, I took possession of an unfinished court-house, designing to have it put in complete repair for hospital purposes; but a general movement of the different commands the day following, threw a large number of sick upon my hands, for whose comfort no adequate provision had been made.
Everything had to be extemporized and that from the rudest materials. The building consisted simply of four bare walls, with no outbuildings of any kind. The medicines and hospital stores required for immediate use had not arrived from St. Louis. The departing regiments took with them their medical officers and hospital attendants, leaving simply the sick, with which the court-house was immediately filled.
To accommodate all, it was found necessary to take possession of some dwelling houses in the place. The physical and mental labor necessary to make this large body of sick at all comfortable under the circumstances, brought on, in less than a month, an attack of low continued fever, from which I did not recover, so as to be again fit for duty, until the last of January, 1862, when an order from Major General Halleck gave me charge of the Hospital of the Sisters of Charity at St. Louis..."
(Photograph: The Phelps County Courthouse in Rolla, Missouri - the same building mentioned by Surgeon N.R. Derby, Missour DNR)
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