How Civil War Vets Continued Living Despite Being Double, Triple, or Even Quadruple Amputees

History Unplugged Podcast

The Civil War wrought horrible devastation on its soldiers: Nearly 500,000 were wounded by bullets, shrapnel or sabers and bayonets. Medicine was still primited, and often a doctor could do little more than amputee an injured limb. As a result, thousands of veterans were left missing one to four limbs, yet still needed to attempt providing for their families despite few job prospects and even fewer resources available to the disable3d.

In this episode we will look at profiles of seven veterans―six soldiers and one physician―and how they coped with their changed bodies in their postwar lives.
Today’s guest is Robert Hicks, author of “Wounded for Life.” We look at how these soldiers were shaped by the trauma of the battlefield and hospital, and the construction of a postwar identity in relation to that trauma.

In particular we discuss:

• Electrical treatments during the Civil War to revive damaged bodies -- part of the founding of American neurology by the physician S. Weir Mitchell
• Phantom limb syndrome and how the veterans still suffered from these wounds decades after the war
• The collective experiences of the veterans profiled in the book show how they dealt with common expectations after the injuries

How this story relates to today's war veterans

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