History of the Medical College of Georgia

6. The Civil War and Its Aftermath

Chapter Six The Civil War and Its Aftermath T JL he city of Augusta, a thriving urban center of roughly thirteen thousand people in 1860, was spared the ravages of war such as were visited upon Atlanta and Columbia. The town, however, was still mightily affected and, partly because it was located at the point where the Carolina and Georgia railroads convened, the depots were jammedwith the curious who came to see the soldiers from other states as they moved to or from the Virginia front. To Joseph Jones, as no doubt to others as well, the swashbuckling Zouaves from far-off Louisiana looked for all the world like "french and Spanish desperadoes."1 The glamor of war soon wore off, however, when these same rail lines began to bring the wounded and dying from the fields of action to Augusta for treatment. The city had but sixty hospital beds early in 1862, so when the news reached town in April that perhaps as many as three hundred wounded and ill were being sent up from Savannah, municipal officials and physicians prepared themselves as best they could. Augusta's City Hotel and the Academy of Richmond County were pressed into service. Lewis D. Ford was put in charge of the situation, withJones as his assistant. After First Manassas and Chancellorsville in autumn of the same year, hundreds more wounded poured into town. The Medical College building was expropriated for offices, and its amphitheater was apparently used for operations. Typhoid, syphilis, and smallpox all became local health concerns. Vaccination was strongly recommended, even for the camp followers who showed their faces around town, much to the consternation of Augusta's sheltered matrons. By the summer of 1863 the Second Georgia Hospital was set up on Broad Street between Fifth and Sixth; shortly thereafter a third hospital was necessary, and it was placed in the 77 78 The Medical College of Georgia First Presbyterian Church. Surgeon William H. Doughty was in charge of the Broad Street facility. Doughty later held the chair of materia medica and therapeutics at MCG. As the war dragged on and as casualties mounted to an appalling number, the local medical authorities reached the limit of their endurance . Finally the Confederate Medical Department had to take charge of the situation, and Blackie Hospital was built in Augusta to help lighten the load on the other facilities. In similar fashion, the early months and years of the war found the majority of hospital work near the fighting being done by various state organizations. In Virginia, for example , Georgia's sick and wounded were supported by the Georgia Hospital Association, with Henry F. Campbell in charge. Local Augusta and Georgia money was earmarked for this particular use, but the procedures involved were not predicated upon the assumption of an extended war nor upon the monstrous number of casualties it would cause. So this system, too, broke down, and the Confederate Medical Service had to expand its scope in order to take proper care of its sick and wounded.2 Shortages of all kinds struck Augusta, from coffee to salt to medicines. In October 1861 the indefatigable Jones published an article in SMSJon indigenous remedies in the South that might be used to counteract a shortage of medicines during the war, and particularly a shortage of quinine.3 But generally speaking the town prospered during the Civil War. The textile mills and factories on the canal ran at—or near—capacity ; a pistol factory for the Confederate Army was located in the city; fifteen hundred women in town were kept hard at work piecing and sewing uniforms for the men in service; the arsenal, scene of an exciting but bloodless encounter between federal troops and Confederates inJanuary 1861, was dramaticallyenlarged. Finally, the Confederate PowderWorks, which sprawled out two miles along the Augusta Canal, produced somewhere in the vicinity of 2,750,000 pounds of powder during its brief three-year existence. George Washington Rains, later on the faculty as professor of chemistry and then dean at the Medical College, was in charge at the Powder Works. Industrial development was given such a boost that Augusta became a major supplier for southern armies.4 After only a brief period at the end of the war, the city, like Columbus and many other fall-line towns, recovered and rebuilt its industry with starding speed. The periods of ebullience and optimism were, however, succeeded by [18.117.137.64] Project MUSE (2024-04-20...