ABSTRACT
During the early days of the Civil War, Nightingale’s well-known Crimean experience shaped a movement to improve military hygiene. Blackwell and Harris helped launch the United States Sanitary Commission. Smith started a new medical college at Bellevue Hospital and managed his journal, American Medical Times. Following the battle of Bull Run in July 1861, Smith supported the USSC’s calls for changes in the Army Medical Department. He went to the Virginia front lines in the summer 1862, where he was horrified by the casual and self-serving care his fellow physicians were delivering. He also saw firsthand the dire consequences of poor sanitation. Unlike many of his colleagues and his two physician cousins whom he trained, Smith did not enlist, but kept Bellevue Medical College going and supported the war effort with his writing. This included his surgical handbook, which advanced the concepts of conservative surgery and became the field manual for the Union Army Medical Department.
