National Museum of Civil War Medicine - National Museum of Civil War Medicine

NMCWM Open Thursday - Sunday

The Museum is open for walk-ins Thursday - Sunday, and by appointment only Monday - Wednesday.

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The Barton Letter Fund

Help us expand our collection of artifacts from the world-famous humanitarian Clara Barton!

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Pry House Hours

The Pry House will be open on Saturdays from June 4 to November 5 and Fridays and Sundays by appointment.

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Weekend Walking Tours

Join Museum Docents for walking tours of Downtown Frederick every Saturday and Sunday April - October at 2:00 PM.

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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

The Pry Garden at the start of the 2019 season

Greet Greg the Gardener

August 16 @ 10:00 am

Meet Greg Susla, the man behind the medicinal herb garden at the Pry House on Tuesdays from 10-2.

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Photo of the Pry House taken September 1862 by Alexander Gardner. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Guided Tours of the Pry House Field Hospital Museum

August 20 @ 1:00 pm

Join the National Museum of Civil War Medicine for guided tours of the Pry House on Antietam National Battlefield every Saturday at 1:00 PM from June 4 through October 29.

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Frederick MD 1862-Civil War Medicine & Clara Barton Museum

One Vast Hospital – Civil War Walking Tour in Downtown Frederick

August 20 @ 2:00 pm

National Museum of Civil War Medicine

Walk in the footsteps of doctors, nurses, and civilians who cared for 8,000 wounded soldiers in Downtown Frederick with Museum docents

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Discover History Firsthand

Take a closer look at artifacts that reveal how history was made.

From Our Blog

“Dead in the Sands of the Sea” – The Story of Carrie Cutter

August 2, 2022

Learn about Carrie Cutter, the first female nurse to die during the Civil War.

Dr. William Hammond, Surgeon General

July 18, 2022

Learn about Surgeon General William Hammond.

The Story of Camp Letterman

July 1, 2022

Learn about Camp Letterman, the largest military hospital built on the Gettysburg battlefield.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary: A Union Army Recruiter

June 20, 2022

Learn about Mary Ann Shadd Cary, an African American woman who recruited for the Union Army

“We Bury Our Dead” – The Effects of Civil War Artillery

June 8, 2022

Learn about the effects of various types of artillery rounds during the Civil War

civilwarmed

It was only with the 20th century achievements of

It was only with the 20th century achievements of luminaries like Karl Landsteiner, Reuben Ottenberg, and Charles Drew that blood transfusions became safe and widely available.

In the centuries before blood types were identified, blood transfusions were risky, rare, and only performed in the most dire of circumstances.

There are two known cases of blood transfusion in the Civil War. The most successful was performed on this day in 1864. Private G. P. Gross, a nineteen year old from Massachusetts was the recipient of blood in a transfusion conducted by Surgeon Edwin Bentley at the Grosvenor Branch Hospital in Alexandria, Virginia.

In this era before blood groups were identified, Bentley selected his best guess at a useful donor: "a strong healthy German."

Source:
Case 1186, "The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion," Part II, Volume III, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1883, page 811-812.

Image credit:
Fig. 410 in Gross, Samuel D., "A System of Surgery; Pathological, Diagnostic, Therapeutic, and Operative," Second Edition, Volume 1, Philadelphia: Blanchard & Lea, 1863, page 493, via Google Books, accessed June 2, 2021, <https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_System_of_surgery_v_1/Y5DrdHUBrK0C>.

#onthisday #medhist #medicalhistory #surgicalhistory

Who needs blood types? #medicalhistory #bloodtrans

Who needs blood types?
#medicalhistory #bloodtransfusion #onthisday #visitalx

A coffee recipe for a Civil War military hospital

A coffee recipe for a Civil War military hospital from the “The Hospital Steward’s Manual,” by Joseph Janvier Woodward, published in 1862:

“No.1. Coffee for ten men.

"Put 9 pints of water into a canteen, saucepan (or other vessel) on the fire; when boiling, add 7 1/2 oz. of coffee; mix them well together with a spoon or piece of wood; leave on the fire a few minutes longer, or until just beginning to boil.

"Take it off, and pour in 1 pint of cold water; let the whole remain ten minutes, or a little longer; the dregs will fall to the bottom, and the coffee will be clear. Pour it from one vessel into another, leaving the dregs at the bottom; add 2 teaspoonfuls of sugar to the pint. If milk is to be had, make 2 pints less of coffee, and add that much milk; boiled milk is preferable.

"REMARKS. - This receipt, properly carried out, would give 10 pints of coffee, or 1 pint per man.”

Source:
Woodward, Joseph Janvier, M.D., "The Hospital Steward's Manual," Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1862.

Image credit:
Detail from "City Point, Cooking, West Point, Virginia," Library of Congress.

#medicalhistory #medhist #coffee

Colonel Noah Lane Farnham United States Army Born

Colonel Noah Lane Farnham
United States Army

Born: June 6, 1829 in New Haven, Connecticut
Served: 1861 - New York Fire Department, 7th New York Militia, 11th New York Volunteer Infantry
Died: August 14, 1861 in Washington, D.C.

Colonel Farnham became one of the earliest casualties of the Civil War to succumb to a traumatic brain injury. Shot in the head at the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861, surgeons examined the wound and believed it to be relatively minor. The bullet barely grazed the officer's scalp, leaving only superficial damage to Farnham's head. These observations failed to reveal a deeper injury: fatal damage to the officer's brain.

"Colonel Farnham, of the New York City Fire Zouaves, was wounded, at the battle of Manassas, July 21st, 1861, by a spent ball, which hit his head and knocked him off his horse. He was picked up insensible. The wound was small in size, superficial in character, and situated on the left side of the head...

"It healed without any difficulty...It was thought that he would recover, until about four days before death. He was partially paralyzed on the right side toward the last. He was comatose in the last moments.

"At the autopsy...we found that the external wound was superficial; that the skull was not injured; that there was copious subarachnoidian effusion [bleeding]; that there was an unusual quantity of yellow-colored serum in the ventricles, and that there was an abscess of the cerebrum, situated directly beneath the wound of the scalp. This abscess was about the size of an English walnut, superficial in situation, and surrounded by softened cerebral tissue..."

Source:
Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion.

Image credit:
Noah Lane Farnham in uniform, 1861, Library of Congress.

#medicalhistory #medhist #surgicalhistory

A photograph from the collections of the Library o

A photograph from the collections of the Library of Congress shows a group of US Army surgeons and hospital stewards at Harewood Hospital in Washington, DC in 1865.

Image credit:
Library of Congress.

#medicalhistory #medhist #surgicalhistory

The Cherokee in the Civil War were a divided peopl

The Cherokee in the Civil War were a divided people. They chose between sovereignty against the odds or survival in the white societies that surrounded them, and between pro- or anti-slavery factions.

Those that joined the United States fled Confederate forces (some of which were composed of their fellow Cherokee) into refugee camps in Kansas. They suffered terrible conditions. One surgeon wrote:

"They greatly need medical assistance. Many have their toes frozen off; others have feet wounded by sharp ice or branches of trees lying on the snow. But few have shoes or moccasins. They suffer with inflammatory diseases of the chest, throat and eyes. Those who come in last get sick as soon as they eat."

Source:
"Forgotten Warriors: American Indian Home Guard," Fort Scott National Historic Site, National Park Service, accessed June 6, 2022, <https://www.nps.gov/articles/aihomeguard.htm>.

Image credit:
"Unidentified Soldier, purported to be a part of the Indian Home Guard," via AccessGenealogy, accessed June 6, 2022, <https://accessgenealogy.com/native/indian-home-guard.htm>.

#medicalhistory #americanindianhistory #nativeamericanhistory #medhist