I was recently introduced to a set of Civil War records that I had not been aware of prior and wanted to share what I’ve found so far in my search of these six volumes as they relate to some of our Civil War soldiers. The volumes are called The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (1861-65).(1) The journals are packed with fascinating statistics relating to all kinds of diseases the men contracted, wounds, and deaths for both sides of the war. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of cases compiled from material written by Army medical surgeons, doctors, hospital staff, and medical directors. I haven’t been able to search all 100+ of our soldiers yet but it’s on my to-do list; however, I have done our 124th NY Orange Blossoms and found two entries from Company G – Lewis P Miller and Cyrenius Giles, both of whom were injured at Chancellorsville in May 1863.(2)
If you have seen our Memorial Day image that we share on Facebook every year, you’ll see Cyrenius Giles was on the list of those who died in service. Cyrenius was a private in Company G of the 124th NY under Captain Isaac Nicoll. He married Sarah Anne Corwin on July 3, 1850, and worked as a wagon/carriage maker. In the 1860 census, he had a burgeoning family; Harriet was 7, Anne Eliza was 5, Chauncey was 3, and he had a 3-month-old unnamed infant son. By the time he enlisted two years later on August 4, 1862, the couple was expecting their last child any day, and right on time, Sarah Jane arrived on August 17, just 13 days after her father enlisted.(3)
Cyrenius, like many of the 124th NY, had a time of it at Chancellorsville in May 1863 – though he was only wounded slightly, this began a downhill slide towards demise. At Locust Grove in November 1863, he was wounded again and according to his pension file, at Petersburg in May 1864, he was struck ill with diarrhea.(3) He was sent to the 3rd Div Hospital, 2nd Army Corp hospital on September 17, 1864, for diarrhea and moved to City Point, Virginia on October 22nd, 1864, to the 2nd Army Corp hospital there for treatment. On November 1st, 1864, he was sent via the steamer Benjamin Deford to Alexandria, VA, to the Fairfax Seminary Hospital. They kept him until April 25, 1865, then the register says he was transferred to another hospital, yet it doesn’t state where exactly, though I have a suspicion it was to Wards Hospital in Newark which had become sort of a “soldier’s home” and there wasn’t much left they could do for him at this point as you’ll read.(4)
However, just a month and some days later, Cyrenius does appears (oddly) in the June 1865 census in Hamptonburgh with his in-laws, his wife, and three of their girls. (The boys and Harriet, the oldest girl, I believe passed away as they never re-appear on any census or pension.) As a genealogist, I don’t think he was home during this period – I think they listed him as part of the family working as a wagon maker but then check marked that he was “in service” at the time, so not really at “home” currently but yet still part of the family. Additionally, the medical journal we’re examining below says he was admitted to Wards Hospital in Newark, New Jersey on May 29, 1865. So how could he check into the hospital in New Jersey in May and yet be “at home” in June in Hamptonburgh for the census? Sadly, Cyrenius was in such dire shape that he died shortly after on July 10, 1865.(4) After reading his autopsy results from the case file, I don’t think they could have kept him at home as sick as he was, nor do I think he could have come home and worked at all – after you read, I think you’ll agree. I believe he checked into the hospital in May and never left – the poor man.
If you’re a Giles descendant or relative with the massive pension file for Sarah Ann Corwin Giles, you might note this information was not included in her widow’s pension application. I don’t know that she ever saw this bit which essentially reads as autopsy notes, because that’s what they are – he was autopsied 5 hours after his death. Reading the case notes, the first thing that jumped out to me was “emaciation extreme.”(4) For the rest of it, I had to turn to Dr. Google who essentially told me that the enlarged mesenteric glands meant that the lymph nodes in his abdomen were inflamed and likely caused him severe pain, tenderness, cramping, nausea, along with diarrhea. But when coupled with the “congested” ileum (a part of the final section in your small intestine), liver, and spleen, it would have been like Crohn’s Disease on steroids for him. His kidney was the size of an “English walnut” which is approximately 2 inches whereas a normal, healthy male’s kidney can range anywhere from 4 – 5.5 inches long. This meant it was practically useless and had not been functioning for some time. In essence, Cyrenius’ system had been painfully shutting down bit by bit.
Before I close, I wanted to briefly touch on the case notes for Corporal Lewis P Miller who was also in Company G under Captain Isaac Nicoll. He was just 27 and mustered in at the same time in September 1862 as Cyrenius Giles and as mentioned earlier, Lewis was wounded on May 3, 1863, at Chancellorsville with a shot to the leg that effectively ended his time in service. Lewis took a Minié ball to the leg and while it essentially healed within the month, he developed “effusion in the joint” (fluid build-up) and his tendons were stiffening up so he wasn’t walking correctly. Apparently, he made the rounds to several hospitals before they booted him to the Veteran Reserve Corp in March 1864 before he received his discharge in August 1865.(6) I haven’t pulled his full pension yet to see where all he was sent, but I can see where his application was granted. His disability didn’t seem to slow him down any in his private life though – Lewis went on to be a constable for Washigntonville, a school tax collector, had an errand-running company, and was active in many groups in the community like the Isaac Nicoll GAR Post and the church.(7)
So, it’s not ALL doom and gloom in the case files in the medical journals. While many of them are cases that ended in death, many are also like Lewis Miller who was there to demonstrate certain situational wounds or amputations that people lived through. It’s worth checking out if you had a soldier in the Civil War who had been wounded or taken ill. You never know what, or who is in there.
If you would like to search for a soldier or peruse the volumes yourself, they can be found for free at the National Library of Medicine as part of the National Institute of Health. Volume 1, Part 1 gives a detailed history on the front pages of how the medical establishment within the military came to start tracking wounds, surgeries, diseases, and deaths. You’re in luck if you’re a medical history aficionado or into vintage medical ephemera because there are also a ton of charts, tables, color plates, engravings, and photographs in there to accompany the case notes.
I should note here that these volumes do not cover every single Union soldier treated by a Union doctor or sent to a hospital; these seem to be select cases that illustrate a certain technique or something outstanding from the norm. But if you have a soldier in your family tree and you already know what your soldier died of, what he contracted, or where he was wounded, you might be in luck. Always worth a check!
To help you find the appropriate volume, they are divided by “types” of diseases/illnesses/injuries they covered:
Part 1, Volume 1 covers “Sickness and Mortality of White Troops” and then a second portion to “Colored Troops.”
Part 1, Volume 2 covers head, face, neck, spine, and chest injuries primarily.
Part 2, Volume 1 covers diarrhea and dysentery complete with case studies.
Part 2, Volume 2 covers injuries to the abdomen, and pelvis, flesh wounds of the back, and wounds and injuries of the upper extremities.
Part 3, Volume 1 covers “camp issues” like camp fevers, scurvy, army itch, alcoholism, and venereal diseases.
Part 3, Volume 2 covers “Wounds and Injuries of the Lower Extremities” along with miscellaneous injuries, wounds and complications, anesthetics, and transportation of wounded individuals.
*A note on searching the volumes for names, there is a name index in the back of each volume but if you want to do it fast, I suggest the OCR text search as opposed to using the PDF search. If I found a name, only then did I download the PDF and find the page I needed. The PDF text convert just didn’t work right all the time, but the OCR text search was much more effective and speedier.
Works Cited:
(1) United States Surgeon General’s Office, The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, 1861-65, 6 vols. (Washington : Government Printing Office, 1870-88).
(2) “Company G,” The Goshen Democrat (Goshen, NY), 14 May 1863; image copy, FultonHistory.com (http://www.fultonhistory.com : accessed 1 September 2024).
(3) Deposition of Claimant, 21 April 1886, Sarah Ann Giles, widow’s pension application no. 107,554, certificate no. 71,555; service of Cyrenius Giles (Pvt., Co. G, 124th N.Y. Vol. Inf., Civil War); Case Files of Approved Pension Applications…, 1861-1934; Civil War and Later Pension Files; Record Group 15: Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs; National Archives, Washington, D.C.
(4) United States Surgeon General’s Office, The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, 1861-65, 6 vols. (Washington : Government Printing Office, 1870-88), Vol I, Part II: 108, case 114, Cyrenius Giles.
(5) U.S. Army Ward General Hospital, Newark, N.J. Rear View photograph, ca. 1862-1866; digital image, JSTOR, (https://jstor.org/stable/community.28576644 : accessed 1 September 2024).
(6) United States Surgeon General’s Office, The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, 1861-65, 6 vols. (Washington : Government Printing Office, 1870-88), Vol II, Part III: 365, case 536, Corporal L.P. Miller.
(7) Lewis P Miller file, various newspaper clippings from Orange County, and miscellaneous genealogical information, in Washingtonville Cemetery digital files, ca. 1835-1915; privately held by Pamela J Moore for Washingtonville Cemetery, Washingtonville, New York, 2024. This collection was expanded from various scant and undated newspaper clippings former Washingtonville Historian Linda Standish had accumulated on veterans in Washingtonville Cemetery in her tenure as historian and custodian of the cemetery records before her passing in January 2022.
The Washingtonville Cemetery 