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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Weekend Walking Tours

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

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Pub History at Abolitionist Ale Works

Join Museum staff at Abolitionist Ale Works in Charles Town, WV for a night of trivia and great beer.

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Death and Destruction Walking Tour

Learn about the most deadly and destructive aspects of Frederick's Civil War experience on this walking tour.

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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

Pub History at Abolitionist Ale Works

September 23 @ 7:00 pm

Abolitionist Ale Works

Join the National Museum of Civil War Medicine at Abolitionist Ale Works in Charles Town, WV for an evening of history, trivia, and beer.

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Statue of Abraham Lincoln and Tsar Alexander II in Russia.

The Alliance of the Union and Imperial Russian Navies

September 24 @ 1:00 pm

Learn about global dimensions of the Civil War through the lens of the US-Russian Naval alliance from Museum docent Brad Stone.

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Frederick City Charles Johnson- Civil War Medicine Museum

One Vast Hospital – Civil War Walking Tour in Downtown Frederick

September 25 @ 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 docent Brad Stone

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Discover History Firsthand

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

From Our Blog

“When Will it End”: A Civil War Surgeon and His First Experiences with War at Antietam

September 14, 2021

Read about Surgeon William Child’s first experience of war at the Battle of Antietam – the bloodiest day in American history.

Two soldiers pose with a whiskey bottle. Courtesy of the Library of Congress

“Half the Time Unfit for Duty”: Alcoholism in the Civil War

September 2, 2021

Alcohol is often associated with war, but just how pervasive was its use during the American Civil War? Read this article to find out.

civilwarmed

What goes better together than beer and history?

What goes better together than beer and history?

Join the staff of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine at Abolitionist Ale Works in Charles Town, West Virginia on Thursday, September 23 at 7:00 PM for the latest installment in the “Pub History” series!

Winchester Hall once housed the Frederick Female S

Winchester Hall once housed the Frederick Female Seminary... and a Civil War hospital.

This historic structure is now home to Frederick County government offices.

Read more about its use as a hospital and the disturbing discovery made outside the hospital in the decades after the Civil War:
https://www.civilwarmed.org/winchester/

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. vividly described a

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. vividly described a trip over the Antietam battlefield in the days after the September 1862 fight:

"The whole ground was strewed with fragments of clothing, haversacks, canteens, cap-boxes, bullets, cartridge-boxes, cartridges, scraps of paper, portions of bread and meat.

I saw two soldiers' caps that looked as though their owners had been shot through the head.

In several places I noticed dark red patches where a pool of blood had curdled and caked, as some poor fellow poured his life out on the sod."

Holmes was searching for his son, an officer in the 20th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry who had been wounded at Antietam on September 17. The doctor turned writer documented his search for his wounded son in an article published in the December 1862 edition of The Atlantic Monthly.

Read "My Hunt After the Captain" here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1862/12/my-hunt-after-the-captain/308750/

(Photograph: An Alexander Gardner photograph of the aftermath of Antietam, September 1862 - Library of Congress)

"All the available buildings in this city (six in

"All the available buildings in this city (six in number) were taken at once for hospitals for our own troops and those of the enemy who should fall into our hands.

These were fitted up with great rapidity, particularly so when it is considered that the enemy was in possession of the city the day before we arrived there; that it had to be examined, the buildings selected and prepared, beds, bedding, dressings, stores, food, cooking arrangements made, surgeons, stewards, cooks, and nurses detailed and sent for.

This was a great deal of labor, but it was done, and done promptly and well. On the 30th of September these hospitals contained 2,321 patients."

- Major Jonathan Letterman, Official Report, March 1863

More than 10,000 wounded and sick soldiers would be treated in Frederick during the fall and winter of 1862-63. In the wake of Antietam, Letterman's revamped evacuation system saved lives efficiently and would later be adopted by the entire U.S. Army in March 1864.

Many of the buildings used as hospitals still stand today as part of the nationally recognized Frederick Historic District.

"Corporal C.H. Dudley, 11th Indiana Battery, recei

"Corporal C.H. Dudley, 11th Indiana Battery, received at Chickamauga, September 20, 1863, a wound of the right foot, a conoidal ball entering the under portion just below the ankle joint.

On November 24, Assistant Surgeon W.S. Ely reports that 'the wound... was thoroughly examined and the diseased tissues found more extensive than had been supposed... the popliteal artery found to be divided by the extent of the ulcerative process and the ligament structures of the knee joint were found extensively destroyed.

Amputation was determined as the only rational treatment."

Corporal Dudley died on December 11, 1863 of complications of the wound received at Chickamauga.

Seriously wounded on this day in 1863 in the Battl

Seriously wounded on this day in 1863 in the Battle of Chickamauga, Captain Frank T. Ryan of the 1st Arkansas Mounted Rifles remembered his harrowing evacuation from the battlefield:

"I lay as the infirmary corps [stretcher bearers] passed me after our men had carried the works, and were still driving the Federals ahead of them, I raised my head, and seeing one of the infirmary corps a few feet ahead of me, I called to him to come back and render me some assistance. He quickly responded. He said that in passing me he had recognized who it was, but from the position I was in thought that I was dead. I told him that while I thought I was badly wounded (had not yet examined to learn the extent), that I was anything but dead.

"Calling three more of his assistants, soon they had me on a stretcher, and started to the rear with me. It was anything but a pleasant place, and the balls were still coming thick and fast...

"In carrying me out one of the corps was shot down; that is, shot in the leg and thereby rendered helpless. Calling another they finally moved me far enough back so as to escape the straggling balls, and depositing me on the ground, returned to the front to render some other poor unfortunate the necessary assistance."

Source:
Ryan, Captain Frank T., "Just Before and During the Battle of Chickamauga, As Recalled by a Participant in the Confederate Army," in History of the Confederate Veterans' Association, of Fulton County, Georgia, Robert L. Rogers compiler, Atlanta: V.P. Sisson, 1890, via HatiTrust Digital Library, accessed August 4, 2020, <https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009609027>.

Image credit:
Detail from "Bringing the wounded into Fredericksburg in the afternoon--of Saturday," Library of Congress