How Civil War Vets Continued Living Despite Being Double, Triple, or Even Quadruple Amputees

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2024

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Civil War wrought horrible devastation on its soldiers: Nearly 500,000 were wounded by bullets, shrapnel or sabers and bayonets. Medicine was still primited, and often a doctor could do little more than amputee an injured limb. As a result, thousands of veterans were left missing one to four limbs, yet still needed to attempt providing for their families despite few job prospects and even fewer resources available to the disable3d.

In this episode we will look at profiles of seven veterans―six soldiers and one physician―and how they coped with their changed bodies in their postwar lives.

Today’s guest is Robert Hicks, author of “Wounded for Life.” We look at how these soldiers were shaped by the trauma of the battlefield and hospital, and the construction of a postwar identity in relation to that trauma.

In particular we discuss:

Electrical treatments during the Civil War to revive damaged bodies -- part of the founding of American neurology by the physician S. Weir Mitchell
Phantom limb syndrome and how the veterans still suffered from these wounds decades after the war
The collective experiences of the veterans profiled in the book show how they dealt with common expectations after the injuries

How this story relates to today's war veterans

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's going to hear with another episode of the History Employed Podcast.
0:07.0	No war wounded and maimed soldiers in the 19th century like the Civil War.
0:12.0	Nearly 500,000 soldiers were left permanently injured, disfigured, disabled by bullets, shrapnel, bayonets, and
0:18.7	sabers.
0:19.7	Because weapons technology
0:25.0	and the technology was much more deadly than it was in the past.
0:26.0	Manyball bullets could leave golf all size exit wounds and soldiers bodies,
0:27.0	but there wasn't the same type of technology to protect them like there would be in the 20th century.
0:31.0	For decades after the war, disabled veterans
0:34.0	were a regular part of American society,
0:36.1	and they would do their best to live
0:37.3	despite having one, two, three, or even four limbs amputated.
0:41.1	What happened to these veterans who were wounded for life, suffering physical and psychological
0:45.1	trauma? In today's episode we're going to be looking at the accounts of soldiers like these.
0:50.0	Men like Henry Kirker, who lost an arm in a leg, but was still able to contribute to his German
0:54.7	immigrant community.
0:56.2	Richard Dunphy, who lost three limbs, tried to continue as a self-sufficient working man, but
1:01.0	mostly blew his pension on alcohol. where Captain John Shields, who suffered wounds
1:05.2	at Gettysburg and Fredericksburg, but was able to become a successful businessman.
1:08.3	We're willing to look at their stories and struggles, the rise of combat medicine,
1:12.8	neurology, development to treat problems
1:15.1	like fancy of limb syndrome,
	...

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