Booth Library Program –

A Field Surgeon’s View Of The Civil War

By Jan Howard

Dr Stewart Petrie spoke about Civil War battles and his great-grandfather during a program September 11 at the C.H. Booth Library, sponsored by the Newtown Historical Society.

The program was based on a journal and letters of Dr Myron Robinson, a field surgeon with the northern army during the conflict.

Dr Petrie, a Civil War re-enactor and member of the Society of Civil War Surgeons, has written a book based on his great-grandfather’s experiences. The book features 41 of his letters as well as his journal.

Dr Robinson, who was from Hebron and later lived in Colchester, attended Berkshire Medical School in Massachusetts. The youngest of 13 children, he was inducted into the 18th Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in Norwich, shortly after he graduated.

“When they recognized he had medical training, he was transferred to the 6th Regiment,” Dr Petrie said. Dr Robinson was in camp only a short time when he was sent south. His journal and his letters reflect the effect of the war on this young, newly graduated surgeon in that he was not fully prepared for the horrors of the road.

“The battle of Antietam was one of the bloodiest days in United States history. It took a lot of medical care,” Dr Petrie said. His great-grandfather wrote that he could hear the cannons in the distance.

During a battle at a South Carolina fort along the Atlantic coast, the northern troops were thrown back, Dr Petrie said. “They retired with terrible casualties, and some were drowning as well.”

By the spring of 1863, Dr Robinson was acting as the field surgeon for 800 to 900 soldiers in his unit as well as others. “Doctors went to whatever group needed help,” Dr Petrie said.

“Those with minor wounds would go back into battle,” he said, and there was an evacuation plan to escort the more seriously wounded to behind the lines. Following a battle at Fort Fisher, casualties were taken to offshore ships.

In September of 1863, following a battle at Fort Wagner, Dr Robinson fell ill as a result of the heat, but wrote that he had just as much to do as if he was in good health. He often would have no supper and work all night because of the number of casualties.

Dr Robinson wrote, “It was the most heart-rending sight I’ve ever seen.”

Amputations were common, Dr Petrie said. The ammunition used was 58 caliber, and “when it hits bone, it breaks it into splinters. They often had no choice but to take off the arm or leg.”

Dr Petrie said the rate of survival after an amputation was usually good, from 60 to 70 percent if the amputation was done in time. If it was done too late, there was the chance that infection had already entered the blood stream.

Many of the soldiers would get gangrene as a result of their wounds or because of surgery. “Their instruments were not clean or sterile. They would often just wipe them off with a cloth,” he said.

Surgeons used probes for bullets and all different size scalpels, he noted.

Anesthetics consisted of either chloroform or ether, which could be highly explosive. “You had to watch out for the fumes,” Dr Petrie said. There were very few deaths as a result of anesthetics, however, he said.

In some cases in southern hospitals, liquor was sometimes used as an anesthetic if there were no others available, he said.

 Gastrointestinal diseases were common in the camps, he said. “There was no refrigeration so food was tainted.” Most of the water was drinkable. Many of the men drank coffee, so the water was sterilized, he noted.

 Stitches were of horse hair, which was boiled to make it pliable, so they were sterilized.

Childhood diseases such a mumps and measles ravaged the troops, as well as respiratory infections, Dr Petrie said. There were herbal medicines, as well as others that contained opium.

The Civil War had more casualties than all the future wars, and two-thirds of the casualties were from infectious diseases, he said.

Dr Robinson did not come home directly after the end of the war but stayed to help with a typhus epidemic, Dr Petrie said.

Once home, Dr Robinson became a horse and buggy doctor. “But after being in the war, he was restless and found it hard to settle down,” Dr Petrie said. At a Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) reunion, he heard about a job in Darien at a veterans’ hospital, and was hired as its chief physician.

“He was happy to see his troops again,” he said. Dr Robinson died at the age of 78 and is buried in Colchester.

Dr Petrie, a resident of Branford, is a graduate of the Temple University Medical School and was in private practice in Ansonia and Derby as well as chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Griffin Hospital in Derby for 35 years.

Dr Petrie’s book, Letters and Journal of a Civil War Surgeon, is available by calling 800/948-2786 or by writing Pentland Press, Inc., 5122 Bur Oak Circle, Raleigh, NC 27612.