Doctor to the Front : Confederate Surgeon Thomas Fanning Wood

The Civil War was a conflict that destroyed many lives, but for those trying to save lives the tragedy was often compounded. Military doctors labored through the battle where impossible conditions and fear of infection often forced them to resort to amputation. Thomas Fanning Wood recorded his experiences as a Confederate Army surgeon, and his recollections of those events allow us to hear a distinct voice of the Civil War. As a soldier recovering from fever at a Richmond hospital, Wood developed an interest in medicine. After only eight months of study, he was made an assistant surgeon in the Third North Carolina Regiment. His narrative presents a poignant and sometimes horrifying picture of what he went through. Wood spent much of his time at the front; his narrative describes both a doctor's daily activities and the campaigns he witnessed. He was present at many of the war's major engagements: he was near Stonewall Jackson when he fell at Chancellorsville, manned a field dressing station at the foot of Gulp's Hill at Gettysburg, and survived the Union attack on the "mule shoe" at Spotsylvania, when his entire division was wiped out. With its observations of medical care and training not found in standard histories of the war-including a description of the examination required to become an assistant surgeon-Doctor to the Front offers a unique human perspective on the Civil War. With additional descriptions of key figures and events, Wood's recollections combine historical significance and human interest to show us another side of that terrible conflict. Book jacket.