The Anesthesia Inhaler
The Confederate Army had a tough time securing enough anesthesia because of the Northern blockade. The standard method of soaking a handkerchief with chloroform wasted the liquid as it evaporated. Dr. Julian John Chisolm solved the dilemma by inventing a 2.5-inch inhaler, the first of its type. Chloroform was dripped through a perforated circle on the side onto a sponge in the interior; as the patient inhaled through tubes, the vapors mixed with air. This new method required only one-eighth of an ounce of chloroform, compared to the old 2-ounce dose. So while Union surgeons knocked out their patients 80,000 times during the war, rebels treated nearly as many with a fraction of the supplies.
American Civil War
So the more I talk about the Civil War, the more I realize how little people actually know about it. So I decided to put a list together of some of the books I really like about the American Civil War. So spread the knowledge because if I have to explain to people one more time how slavery was a huge part of the CW, I might scream… The majority of these books are from academics/scholars of the Civil War. To put it nicely, the popular history on the Civil War is fucking awful.
- A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868 by Anne S. Rubin (she is just one badass woman and incredibly funny)
- Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South by Stephanie McCurry
- The Union War by Gary W. Gallagher
- Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust
- Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War by Nicholas Lemann
- This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust
- For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War by James M. McPherson
- Scarlett Doesn’t Live Here Anymore: Southern Women in the Civil War Era by Laura F. Edwards
- Daughters of the Union: Northern Women Fight the Civil War by Nina Silber
- Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War by Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber
- The Political Work of Northern Women Writers and the Civil War, 1850-1872 by Lyde Cullen Sizer
- Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers by Joseph T. Glatthaar
- Firebrand of Liberty: The Story of Two Black Regiments That Changed the Course of the Civil War by Stephen V. Ash
- In the Cause of Liberty: How the Civil War Redefined American Ideals by William J. Cooper and John M. McCardell
- Battle Scars: Gender and Sexuality in the American Civil War by Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber
- Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy by Elizabeth R. Varon
- The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell: Sex in the Civil War by Thomas P. Lowry
- The Civil War as a Crisis in Gender, Augusta Georgia 1860-1890 by LeeAnn White
- Lincoln’s Proclamation: Emancipation Reconsidered edited by William A. Blair and Karen Fisher Younger
- Civil War Citizens: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in America’s Bloodiest Conflict edited by Susannah J. Ural
- The Boundaries of American Political Culture in the Civil War Era by Mark E. Neely Jr.
- Roots of Secession: Slavery and Politics in Antebellum Virginia by William A. Link
- The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner
- Becoming American Under Fire: Irish Americans, African Americans, and the Politics of Citizenship During the Civil War Era by Christian G. Samito
- Lincoln and the Decision for War: The Northern Response to Secession by Russell McClintock
- Lincoln and the Civil War by Michael Burlingame
