"A Remarkable Case": A Surgeon's Letter to the Huntington County Globe
It would have taken an extraordinary set of wounds to surprise a Union surgeon four years into the bloody war. A remarkable letter buried in the pages of the Huntington County Globe in August 1865, however, details just such a case and gives us a glimpse into the rigors of life as a soldier and into the practice of medicine during the Civil War. Orderly Sergeant Michael Logan of the Sixteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry had the misfortune of being treated for so many grievous battle injuries that in August 1865, a week after Logan’s company had mustered out in Richmond, Virginia, J. E. P., the surgeon of the ward at the York, Pennsylvania, hospital wrote a letter to Logan’s local newspaper describing the case.