Civil War Medicine From the Perspective of S. Weir Mitchell's ?The Case of George Dedlow?*

Abstract

In 1866, a year following the close of the American Civil War, an anonymous article arousing much public interest appeared in the popular magazine, The Atlantic Monthly. The real author, Silas Weir Mitchell, who became one of America's most distinguished neurologists, wrote this short story early in his career while serving as a contract army surgeon and conducting his important clinical researches in nerve injuries. This article was the first literary effort in his long and prolific career as a physician/writer. Historians citing this article have focused almost exclusively on the early descriptions of causalgia and phantom limb syndrome, appearing as it did in a popular magazine. The present author proposes to show, for the first time, that Mitchell actually intended to describe many important medical consequences of the American Civil War, which was later shown to have so profoundly affected him throughout his medical and literary career. He cleverly accomplished this through the narration of Assistant Surgeon George Dedlow, who loses all four extremities by amputation.

Voices from the past: Mental and physical outcomes described by American Civil War amputees

“…Weir Mitchell himself later wrote extensively about the experience of the veteran and war-time physician in medical reports and in non-fiction pieces written for a larger American A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t 26 audience (Bourke, 2009;Canale, 2002). Included in the survey are questions that provide tantalizing clues to the traumatic healing process of the respondents almost 30 years following their injury and amputation.…”

“…As today, Civil War veterans faced increasing public scrutiny, as well as the burden to adapt to a changing post-war society. Peter Blanck (2001;2002) provides a detailed background to the development of federal support to veterans during and following the end of the Civil War. To recruit soldiers for the Union Army, Congress introduced the Civil War pension system in 1861, providing pensions for disabled soldiers, as well as widows and minor children of soldiers.…”