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The Wounded, The Sick, And The Scared: An Examination Of Disabled Maine Veterans From The Civil War, John D. Blaisdell

Maine History

Students of Civil War history often harbor a sterilized impression that veterans included only the living, who returned home to pick up the threads of their previous existence, and the dead, who were laid to rest with honors in local or national cemeteries. In truth, there were many who fell in between: neither dead nor physically intact, they suffered debilitating injury or disease for their remaining lives. Records of some 260 such individuals in the Bangor Historical Society provide insight into the medical and surgical problems suffered by Civil War veterans. Their conditions fall into four categories: those who suffered …