Excerpt from A Manual of Military Surgery, for the Use of Surgeons in the Confederate Army: With an Appendix of the Rules and Regulations of the Medical Department of the Confederate Army In putting forth this Manual of Military Surgery for the use of surgeons in the Confederate service, I have been led by the desire to mitigate, if possible, the horrors of war as seen in its most frightful phase in military hospitals. As our entire army is made up of volunteers from every walk of life, so we find the surgical staff of the army composed of physicians without surgical experience. Most of those who now compose the surgical staff were general practitioners, whose country circuit gave them but little surgery, and very seldom presented a gunshot wound. Moreover, as our country had been enjoying an uninterrupted state of peace, the collecting of large bodies of men, and retaining them in health, or the hygiene of armies had been a study without an object, and therefore without interest. When the war suddenly broke upon us, followed immediately by the blockading of our ports, all communication was out off with Europe, which was the expected source of our surgical information. As there had been no previous demand for works on military surgery, there were none to be had in the stores, and our physicians were compelled to follow the army to battle without instruction. No work on military surgery could be purchased in the Confederate States. As military surgery, which is one of expediency, differs so much from civil practice, the want of proper information has already made itself seriously felt. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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