Tarnished Scalpels

Tarnished Scalpels is an examination of the court-martials of fifty Union medical officers during the American Civil War. Both of this book's authors are well-known in the Civil War legal and medical history fields. Lowry, in addition to Tarnished Eagles: The Court-Martials of Fifty Union Colonels and Lieutenant Colonels and Don't Shoot That Boy: Abraham Lincoln and Military Justice, is also the author of Civil War Bawdy Houses of Washington, D.C. and The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell: Sex in the Civil War. Welsh is the author of two volumes on the medical histories of Union and Confederate general officers. In addition, Lowry and his wife are the founders of and researchers for Index Project, Inc., a non-profit, tax-exempt corporation, which is attempted to index the approximately 80,000 general court-martial files currently held by the National Archives and Record Administration. Tarnished Scalpels contains fifty chapters divided into six general categories - Care of Patients, Stranger Than Fiction, Misuse of Food and Money, Wine and Women, Rules and Authority, and Where's the Doctor? AWOL! Each chapter examines the case of an individual surgeon, including an outline of the case against him, the testimony from both sides, the verdict of the court, the subsequent actions of the surgeon (where available), and some commentary by the authors as to the validity of the case and medical issues involved. The individual cases run from the mundane (several surgeons were AWOL from regiments for various reasons) to the amusing (several other surgeons were tried for their involvement with either alcohol or "lewd" women), and from the bizarre (a surgeon was tried for circumcising a soldier of the 54th Massachusetts against his will) to the disturbing (a surgeon who performed an autopsy and then kept the soldier's decapitated head underneath his cot). As with Lowry's previous volume on the court-martials of Union colonels, there is no faulting the level of research involved in preparing this volume, since all of these accounts come directly from the files of the National Archives and Record Administration. Unfortunately, also as with Lowry's previous volume, many of the cases are somewhat dull and repetitive. The authors can also be faulted for interjecting comments about modern-day political/legal/medical issues in a book about the American Civil War. These comments are unwarranted and add nothing positive to the book. Nevertheless, with the above criticisms in mind, this book is recommended for those with an interest in Civil War medical or legal history.

This is an excellent book for the Civil War medical reenactor. It traces the court marshals of Union Doctors for various offenses. The Authors not only provide the facts of the case but commentary as to the validity of the case against the specific doctor. Their search of the court cases during the Civil War provide new insights into the difficulties of the Union Doctors in caring for not only the wounded and sick of their own regiments but that of others. Many times the situations were out of the hands of the doctor that caused their downfall. Very readable in about 3-4 hours, it provides a perspective not provided by any other book to date. The authors' research and organization of the cases are to be complemented. I own over 200 books on Civil War medicine, this one is a must for the serious medical reader of the age.