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Jonathan Letterman, the Civil War Doctor Who Pioneered Battlefield Care
Arcade Publishing
July 2013
On Sale: July 1, 2013
Featuring: Jonathan Letterman
368 pages
ISBN: 1611458390
EAN: 9781611458398
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction | Non-Fiction Biography
The first full-length biography of the Civil War
surgeon who, over the course of the war’s bloodiest
battles—from Antietam to Gettysburg—redefined military
medicine. Jonathan Letterman was an outpost
medical officer serving in Indian country in the years
before the Civil War, responsible for the care of just
hundreds of men. But when he was appointed the chief medical
officer for the Army of the Potomac, he revolutionized
combat medicine over the course of four major
battles—Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and
Gettysburg—that produced unprecedented numbers of
casualties. He made battlefield survival possible by
creating the first organized ambulance corps and a more
effective field hospital system. He imposed medical
professionalism on a chaotic battlefield. Where before 20
percent of the men were unfit to fight because of disease,
squalid conditions, and poor nutrition, he improved health
and combat readiness by pioneering hygiene and diet
standards. Based on original research, and with stirring
accounts of battle and the struggle to invent and supply
adequate care during impossible conditions, this new
biography recounts Letterman’s life from his small-town
Pennsylvania beginnings to his trailblazing wartime years
and his subsequent life as a wildcatter and the medical
examiner of San Francisco. At last, here is the missing
portrait of a key figure of Civil War history and military
medicine. His principles of battlefield care continue to be
taught to military commanders and first responders. 24 b/w
photographs
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