I've done various searches (variations on the theme of "American civil war" plus "burial", "mass grave", "casualties" "clothes" and so on
( Read more... )
Sites of the larger and bloodier battles of the Civil War are well known for the mass graves that were later dug up and the bodies either returned to the families or reinterred in national cemeteries. At Gettysburg, for instance, many men were buried where they fell, and later moved to the cemetery that's now over by the visitor's center. There was rarely if ever any sort of laying out done on the field. If you Google a few specific battles (G'burg, Antietam, the Bull Runs) you'll probably find more specific information on how the dead were dealt with afterwards.
Yes, but I'm specifically looking for information about a death at a hospital, rather than on the battlefield; presumably a battlefield would involve several hudred dead, whereas at a small hospital, there'd be fewer people at one time, so the way the bodies were treated may be different.
I do know that Vivien Leigh suffered from TB (iirc, she died from it in 1967) so you might want to look up a bio or two of hers and see if anything is mentioned/written about it. Also, if you wiki either TB or her name, there ought to be a list at the very bottom with a "list of TB victims", which would help with finding firsthand accounts.
try researching "Carnton Plantation" or "Battle of Franklin". While I don't recall specifics about how the dead were treated (except for the 5 Confederate Generals that were killed in the battle - they were laid out on the parch of the house), I do recall the stories of the amputated limbs being thrown out the windows and eventually piling up to the second story windows.
When Whitman arrived at the front and climbed the river bank to the Lacy House, a makeshift military hospital, his first sight was "a heap of feet, legs, arms, and human fragments, cut bloody, black and blue, swelled and sickening . . ."4 Despite such grotesque scenes, he quickly became engrossed in the passion and pathos of the wartime hospitals. He remained in camp with George for eight or nine days and spent much of his time at the field hospital. In his diary of December 26, 1862, he writes, "Death is nothing here. As you step out in the morning from your tent to wash your face you see before you on a stretcher a shapeless extended object, and over it is thrown a dark grey blanket-- it is the corpse of some wounded or sick soldier of the reg't who died in the hospital tent during the night-- perhaps there is a row of three or four of these corpses lying covered over."
Sorry, that's the closest I could find. The page tends to talk about grander hospitals than what you want when it isn't talking about Whitman. Here is the page if
( ... )
Comments 12
Reply
Reply
Reply
Carnton was a field hospital for the battle.
Reply
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1079536 - diary of a woman who in 1944 was diagnosed with TB and sent to a sanitorium. You could probably get more from the journal, but the link gives an idea of what she wrote.
Reply
Sorry, that's the closest I could find. The page tends to talk about grander hospitals than what you want when it isn't talking about Whitman. Here is the page if ( ... )
Reply
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment