PART I During and after the Civil War surgeons began looking closely at a medical condition that affected some soldiers; what we today know as PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). It was sometimes first referred to as “melancholy” or “nostalgia” during the war. Then when surgeon Jacob Mendes Da Costa observed symptoms that he classified as a heart issue, which came be to known as “Da Costa’s syndrome,” an idiom…

As the armies melted away from Gettysburg the horror was just beginning for the town and surrounding community. Nurses and volunteers flowed in from as far as New Jersey even before the fighting had ended. One such volunteer was Cornelia Hancock. Hancock was born on February 8, 1840 in southern New Jersey and was one of five children of a Quaker family. By 1863 her brother and “every male relative”…

Some incredible content from a Confederate soldier in the 39th Georgia Infantry near Vicksburg in March, 1863. At this time Grant was flailing as he attempted to get at Vicksburg. He conducted a series of attempts to circumvent the Mississippi or construct alternative water pathways so as to get at Vicksburg. When Grant finally makes it south of Vicksburg and moves in on the fortress city, one can’t help but…

The process of “hardening” (via the experience of battle over a period of time) has been analyzed by historians and interpreted in several different ways. James M. McPherson saw the stress (combat fatigue) of combat as a breaking down of the soldier’s senses (“the nerve to endure”) thus subduing the awareness to suffering. That though they saw horrible things, they could rise above it and McPherson stressed the importance of…