Civil War Living History Day brings past to life
Union Civil War soldiers marched in tight formation with a drummer boy steadily keeping time on a field as a fire warmed up a pot of food and surgeons prepared to amputate an arm.
The Civil War Living History Day at Mabee Farm Historic Site, in Rotterdam Junction, on Saturday, April 16, brought to life conditions faced during the civil war. The event was tied to One County, One Book, which is a historical novel about Mary Sutter, a midwife dreaming to become a surgeon who finds the Civil War gives her just the opportunity she needs. The event started at 10 a.m. with President Abraham Lincoln arriving, and throughout the day there were demonstrations and speakers focusing on the time period.
There were a few medical displays set up on the farm, but one focused on reenacting the gory details of what soldiers went through during an amputation. There was a pile of fake limbs in the corner of the tent, because surgeons would just toss the amputated limbs aside.
`Not that many men were brought in by an ambulance to a field hospital. They were either brought in by a friend or they walked in on their own,` said Wayne Waite, portraying a major and surgeon with the 117th Regiment New York Volunteers Field Hospital. `They might have been out there for days before they came to the hospital.`
If a solider was brought in the first day of being wounded, depending on the severity of the wound, there was a 60 percent chance of a successful recovery after an amputation, said Richard Swalgin, portraying Waite’s hospital steward. The survival rate dropped significantly the longer the wait for treatment. Soldiers didn’t carry any first aid kit or items with them, and they often wouldn’t even have any identification on themselves.
Waite started to prepare for a mock amputation with Swalgin administering the anesthesia, which wasn’t alcohol as some might have thought, because alcohol would actually thin the blood. The anesthetics commonly used during the Civil War were chloroform and ether. Administering chloroform would allow surgeons about 15 minutes to perform the amputation. Bone, flesh and muscle damage were all factors leading to an amputation.
After cutting some `flaps` of skin, Waite had his stewards pull the skin back about 3 inches with a tool. Then Waite grabbed his bone saw and cut through the patient’s bone.
`The limbs were thrown out windows and they were thrown out doors, because they are no use to me or anybody else,` said Waite tossing the hand aside into the pile of limbs.
After the bone is filed down, Waite applied a painkiller containing opium to the wound and tied up the arties. Four days later, Waite would check for laudable pus on the wound because surgeons were taught this pus was a sign of proper healing. The pus was actually infection starting. It has also been documented, said Swalgin, that some surgeons would scrape some pus off one patient and apply it to a patient without any pus.
Out from the field in the large tent setup was Dan Celik, but he focused less on the gory aspects of surgery and more on a vast collection of tools used in a field hospital.
`To be a surgeon, you only needed two years of schooling,` said Celik. `Typically, before you went to a university, you needed a voucher from two practicing physicians that you would apprentice with, and you had to have those two vouchers first before you could apply to university.`
He said a good surgeon could do a good amputation in less than 12 minutes. A company or regiment would typically be made up of a town, so the surgeon would be sent off with a medical kit from the town.
There was even a smaller saw, called a Hey’s Saw, which was used to cut off larger pieces of skull, which could be done after drilling to relieve fluid in the brain. A `giggly saw` was used to resection the bone, to cut out a portion of the damaged area and draw the two sections together. Why the saw had its nickname though is from a creepy reasoning.
`When it was drawn across the bone, it gives an eerie sound of a child giggling,` said Celik. `They still use these in the O.R. today.`
The problem with many medications provided to patients was the addictive nature that doctors weren’t aware of originally.
`What they didn’t realize is that a lot of these medications were highly addictive,` said Celik. `They created a whole generation of drug addicts, which they defined as old soldiers disease, not drug addiction.`
Connection to the past
Kyle Grubbs, of Scotia, said she has a couple of ancestors, on the southern side, in history books. One ancestor, with the last name of Helm, was married to the sister of Mary Todd Lincoln. Lincoln advisors told him he should arrest Helm since he was from the south, but Lincoln wrote a pardon for him.
`I guess Lincoln didn’t want to hassle with the women folk,` said Grubbs. `He said, ‘I pardon Helm for anything he has done or will do in the course of the war’ so he could come to Washington and visit.`
Family members told Grubbs about her ancestors, but she hoped to find out more through doing some research. She also had a great-great grandmother that was cousins with Robert E. Lee’s mother. Helm was her grandmother’s maiden name.
`I like going to these things and learning about them and I love history,` said Grubbs. `It was a little hard sitting in the thing with Abraham Lincoln and hearing them call us traitors though. I’m in the enemy camp.`
She said she also believed she had a great-grandfather who had one of his legs amputated in the war.
Connecting to the present
Capital District Blue Star Mothers of America, which is made up of mothers of children on active duty or veterans, had a table set up for people to write letters to individuals in active duty. The letters would be going out to troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and even some in the United States. Groups of schoolchildren had already written dozens of letters to be sent off as part of a school program.
`The reason the whole project got started was it was to make a connection between what would happen in the Civil War and what we can do now,` said Karen Curtis with Blue Star Mothers.
Karen Bradley, coordinator for One County, One Book, said teachers suggested what would be appropriate to do in connection with the book focused on this year.
`It was a great connection with curriculum,` said Bradley. `The letters that are here from Glen-Worden, those are from second graders. It is good for kids to know and understand.`
There was a special event also held at Schenectady High School were actual letters and diaries written during the civil war, which were read by students in the county. For the letters written by students, Blue Star Mothers help find individuals to send the letters to, because any letter sent has to have a name attached to it.“