Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

July 12, 2016

Dr. Horwitz’s Guide to Gunshot Wounds, Circa 1862

A Jewish surgeon’s Civil War manual.

The confluence of developments in medical knowledge and military technology enabled doctors to learn a great deal about surgery during the American Civil War. Since, at the war’s outset, very few physicians had any experience treating gunshot wounds, P.J. Horwitz—a Jew from Baltimore and the Union navy’s surgeon general—authored a brief manual on the subject. Here are two excerpts:

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