Dix Hospital was racially integrated until 1880 when the state built the North Carolina Asylum for Colored Insane (now Cherry Hospital) in Goldsboro, North Carolina (Dorothea Dix Hospital, 2014).Ī great irony of the American Civil War is that its enormous toll on human health-over a million casualties, approximately 660,000 deaths from war and disease, 60,000 amputations, untold thousands suffering from a variety of physical and mental disorders-produced vast advances in scientific knowledge. Local African American residents soon followed. Within days, the Union Provost Marshall ordered the first African American patient, a Union soldier, be admitted to Dix Hospital. Union troops captured Raleigh in the spring of 1865. Army General Hospital for Colored Troops in Wilmington, smaller Union hospitals were located in Morehead City and on Hatteras Island (Giri, 2014 Hutchinson, 2002 Williams, 2011). In addition to Foster and Stanley Hospitals in New Bern, Hammond Hospital in Beaufort, the U.S. These were the first hospitals in the state to offer more or less equal care to white and African American patients. Five Union hospitals were established in this area. (Pollitt & Reese, 2002, Humphreys, 2013).Įarly in the Civil War, much of coastal North Carolina fell to Union troops. None of these facilities allowed African American patients through their doors. There were neither antibiotics to stop infections, nor immunization to prevent outbreaks of measles, tetanus, diphtheria, and other diseases that took more lives than the battlefields. Amputations were common and diseases spread rapidly. Despite the heroic efforts of doctors and nurses, conditions in Civil War hospitals were grim and overcrowded. Some military camps established their own small hospitals for soldiers who fell ill during training. Hotels, churches, and schools served as these makeshift hospitals. Smaller, temporary hospitals-often run by local women and known as “Wayside Hospitals”-sprang up along railroad lines. The Confederate States of America quickly established 13 large military hospitals around North Carolina with the largest facilities in Charlotte, Fayetteville, Goldsboro, Raleigh, Salisbury, Wake Forest, Wilmington, and Wilson. Instead, the Civil War produced an unprecedented number of sick and wounded soldiers creating a medical crisis. Because of this error in judgment, little provision was made for the care of wounded and sick soldiers. A common misconception was that the Civil War would be quickly and easily won. The leaders of the Confederacy were busy organizing a new government, establishing foreign relations and fighting the War. Pollitt’s book African American Hospitals in North Carolina: 39 Institutional Histories, 1880-1967 )Īt the outbreak of the Civil War, in the spring of 1861, no trained nurses or general hospitals and few physicians existed in the state of North Carolina. Surgeons were at work under very rude conditions.(Excerpted from Dr. The auditorium of the church was on the second floor and the wounded had to be carried up a long flight of stairs from the street. “…Charles McCurdy recalled: ‘Two doors below our house, the College Lutheran Church was filled with the wounded. …This was probably the first public building in the town of Gettysburg to be commandeered as a hospital by Union soldiers. Adams County is fortunate to have it standing mostly unchanged. It may be the only church in the town that outwardly appears as it did in July of 1863. “One of the most aesthetically pleasing and stately public buildings anywhere in the Gettysburg area, is this church, located on the south side of Chambersburg Street. The following are passages from Gregory Coco’s book, “A Vast Sea of Misery:” Infantry – and a patient at Christ Lutheran hospital July 1-3, 1863. A Massachusetts soldier never wanted for anything they could give.” Three Years With Company K Sgt. From the earliest to the latest day, they were the same loyal, generous people. “Let it ever be said to the honor of the good people of Penn., that they never withheld anything from the soldiers that was for their general good.
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