ABSTRACT

Civilian healthcare differed greatly from military healthcare during the Civil War era. For all its faults, the military paradigm had its advantages: sophisticated general and specialized hospitals, the emergence of the professional nurse, an improved ambulance service, and surgeons trained and experienced in trauma and emergency surgery. For those Americans at home or the farm during the era, the state of medicine was less progressive. It also had divisions and inequities that mirrored the state of the Union: whites vs. African Americans, North vs. South, rich vs. poor, city vs. farm, professionals vs. quacks, empiricism vs. rational invention, among many others. In brief, there was no one home-front medical experience in the mid-nineteenth century. Even within these divisions there were distinctions with a decided difference. For example, medicine and healthcare looked different among the era’s African American population, with distinctions between free and enslaved, male and female, children and adults, plantations and industrial centers.