New Civil War Book Includes Information, Photos from Museum
By Jim Connor, Ph.D.

Michael A. Dreese, vice-president of the Susquehanna Civil War Round Table and author of The 151st Pennsylvania Volunteers at Gettysburg, recently wrote The Hospital on Seminary Ridge at the Battle of Gettysburg. The book tells the history of the Gettysburg Seminary and used the National Museum of Health and Medicine as a resource.

Following is a review of the book by Jim Connor, Ph.D., assistant director for collections and curator of the historical collections at the museum. To order The Hospital on Seminary Ridge at the Battle of Gettysburg, call 1-800-253-2187.

Readers of Flesh and Bones who are also Civil War medicine buffs should learn much from Michael A. Dreese's The Hospital on Seminary Ridge at the Battle of Gettysburg (McFarland, 2002; ISBN 0-7864-1224-0, 200pp,$45). This nicely produced and aptly illustrated book tells the story of the Gettysburg Lutheran Theological Seminary, founded in 1827, and its guiding lights such as Samuel Simon Schmucker (1799-1873) who was this institution's main professor and an ardent abolitionist.

But if the body of this book is about the Seminary's evolution, it's heart is located in the bloody events of the Battle of Gettysburg when the seminary's main building, the "Old Dorm," became a makeshift military hospital for hundreds of wounded Union and Confederate soldiers. Dreese's vivid narrative and eye for accurate detail lends a real "you are there" feel to the book. His quotations from letters, diaries, and other documents of the era heighten the emotional appeal of his descriptions of those who were wounded as well as those who tried to aid or comfort them. As part of his research for this book, the author consulted with National Museum of Health and Medicine staff and used the rich Civil War holdings of the museum thus his identification of the NMHM as a "national treasure" is based on his own personal experience.

Looking back at the surgical treatment then available it is easy to criticize the army surgeons for their many failures as Dreese does, but when one considers the thousands upon thousands of hopelessly wounded and debilitated men which this battle alone caused it is perhaps more worthwhile to marvel at those who survived and continued to have productive post-war lives. Fortunately, Dreese also has done this-a reminder then that while war always has been and will be a messy business, at its end people do get back to living normal lives again as best they can. The Hospital at Seminary Ridge can certainly take its place with the growing number of books that deal with medicine and care during the Civil War; students of these topics will want to add this new addition to their collection.

Jim Connor, Ph.D. is the 2001 recepient of the Chalmers Award from the Champlain Society for his book "Doing Good, the Life of Toronto's General Hospital."