Marrow of Tragedy: The Health Crisis of the American Civil War Hardcover – July 3, 2013
Author: Margaret Humphreys | Language: English | ISBN: 1421409992 | Format: PDF, EPUB
Download Marrow of Tragedy: The Health Crisis of the American Civil War Hardcover – July 3, 2013 from 4shared, mediafire, hotfile, and mirror link
Review
A consistently engaging overview of Civil War medicine in its every aspect. Based on careful research and mastery of an abundant literature, Marrow of Tragedy provides a powerful depiction of a subject revealing of a dynamic and increasingly complex American society.
(Charles Rosenberg, Harvard University)If there is one study that shows us the significance of sickness in the Civil War, and the attempts to define and counter it, this is it. With admirable scholarship and an eye for key turning points, Humphreys has written a compelling history of the war’s medical costs and achievements.
(Steven M. Stowe, Indiana University)Full of fresh perspectives, thoughtful insights, and judicious re-assessments, this sweeping synthesis by an outstanding historian will fundamentally change the way we think about Civil War medical history. For scholars and general readers alike, Marrow of Tragedy is a must-read book.
(James C. Mohr, University of Oregon)Marrow of Tragedy by Duke University’s Margaret Humphreys, is an immensely readable synthesis of what she terms 'the greatest health disaster that this country has ever experienced.'
(John David Smith The News & Observer)Humphrey's work accomplishes several tasks. It puts mid-19th century health care through a prism of military concerns, civilian responses to war, medical science and women's environment. It offers clear and concise depictions of individuals and their vendettas, such as military officers embracing or not tolerating civilian efforts. Marrow of Tragedy: The Health Crisis of the American Civil War presents a compelling story of Americans, civilian and military, struggling together to do acts of mercy and create better environments during an era of brother against brother bloodshed.
(Rea Andrew Redd Civil War Book Review)About the Author
Margaret Humphreys is the Josiah Charles Trent Professor in the History of Medicine, a professor of history, and a professor of medicine at Duke University. She is the author of Intensely Human: The Health of the Black Soldier in the American Civil War and Malaria: Poverty, Race, and Public Health in the United States, also published by Johns Hopkins.
Books with free ebook downloads available Marrow of Tragedy: The Health Crisis of the American Civil War Hardcover – July 3, 2013
- Hardcover: 400 pages
- Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press; 1 edition (July 3, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1421409992
- ISBN-13: 978-1421409993
- Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #180,278 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #87 in Books > Textbooks > Medicine & Health Sciences > Medicine > Special Topics > History
[...]
The past couple decades have seen the publication of a number of books documenting Civil War medicine. The classics are George Worthington Adams Doctors in Blue published in 1966 and H.H. Cunningham's Doctors in Gray published in 1958. The Society of Civil War Surgeons , founded in 1980, publishes a quarterly journal for its membership of scholars and reenactors. There are at least a dozen books currently in print covering various aspects of the topic. More recent comprehensive treatments, Frank R. Freemon’s Gangrene and Glory: Medical Care during the American Civil War, published in 2001, and Alfred Jay Bollet’s Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs, published in 2002, beg the question whether another book is necessary or redundant.
Margaret Humphreys promises a gendered approach to Civil War medicine, exploring of how masculine and feminine behaviors and attitudes affected the structure of medical care. The author wisely used this approach as her muse or point of departure and was not heavy handed in its application in subsequent chapters. While most authors of this topic focus primarily on military medicine performed within the combat zone, Humphreys focuses on medical care in the general hospitals established in major towns and cities throughout the country. The book is a study of how the Army Medical Department and concerned civilians adapted and created institutions, such as hospitals and nongovernmental organizations, to deal with an unexpectedly large number of sick and wounded men.
As one would expect from a book that promises a gendered approach, the author explores the role of women as nurses, physicians and social workers. She objectively describes their success as well as their limitations.
Margaret Humphrey’s Marrow of Tragedy: The Health Crisis of the American Civil War (2013) consolidates the scholarship of the past two decades and reviews the material from the perspective of society-wide public health issues. Many Americans during the mid-19th century were accustomed to healing and recovering in a Victorian home sickroom visited by a doctor and attended to by a mother or sister. Home cooked food, served to a sick or injured person lying in clean bed occupying a room with ventilation were the essential elements of regaining personal health. Public hospitals and asylums were used by the poor, travelers, or sailors.
For those who fought it, the Civil War “was less about heroism and more about the daily grind of disease, hunger, death and disability.” [2] Marrow of Tragedy: The Health Crisis of the American Civil War describes a humanitarian revolution that came to grips with the Victorian elites’ cultural understanding of the virtues of honor and heroism, manliness and military service. Within the past two years, an estimate of the war’s death toll rose from 625,000 to more than 750,000 and counting civilians nearly 800,000. Roughly two thirds of military deaths were brought about through disease and approximately 56,000 soldiers died in prison camps during the conflict. It is estimated that 60,000 men lost limbs in the war. Margaret Humphreys understands the Civil War to be the greatest public health disaster in the nation’s lifetime.
Humphreys finds that during wartime the role of women in medicine expanded during debates over the causation and prevention of infectious diseases, the re-design of hospitals, and the limits of proximity that women could approach the battlefields.
No comments:
Post a Comment