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[1864 to 1873 Letters with Medical Content by or concerning Civil War Surgeon Edwin C. Bidwell, 31st Massachusetts Volunteers].
[1864 to 1873 Letters with Medical Content by or concerning Civil War Surgeon Edwin C. Bidwell, 31st Massachusetts Volunteers].
[1864 to 1873 Letters with Medical Content by or concerning Civil War Surgeon Edwin C. Bidwell, 31st Massachusetts Volunteers].

[1864 to 1873 Letters with Medical Content by or concerning Civil War Surgeon Edwin C. Bidwell, 31st Massachusetts Volunteers].

“[T]he bodies of two persons after lightning struck…”


Three letters, two Civil War-date, by or concerning physician and Civil War surgeon Edwin C. Bidwell. Bidwell served in the 31st Massachusetts Infantry in New Orleans.

One letter from medical examiner and Harvard Professor of Legal Medicine Dr. Frank W. Draper recounts Bidwell’s war-time “...account of the appearance of the bodies of two persons after lightning struck.”

The earliest letter, from 1864, was written to Dr. Bidwell by Massachusetts Surgeon General W.M. Dale. Dale compliments Bidwell for his solicitude of the soldiers in his care stating that “[ I] wish you to consider yourself as ‘in loco parentis’ so far as our boys are concerned.”

The second letter, Bidwell’s November 1864 draft letter in reply to Dale, notes that in his leisure hours, Bidwell has made medical observations concerning a “theory of gunshot wounds.” This letter was written on the back of a re-purposed partly-printed “Morning Report of the Surgeon of a Regiment, Post or Garrison” for the 3rd Massachusetts Cavalry. With perfunctory manuscript notes, it was autographed by Assistant Surgeon Daniel F. Leavitt.

The third letter, dated June 14, 1873, concerns Bidwell’s medical account of lightning strike victims on Ship Island, Mississippi in 1862. The letter, addressed to Dr. Bidwell eight years after the end of the Civil War, was sent by Dr. Frank W. Draper (1843–1909), assistant editor of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. Draper, a medical examiner in Boston and Harvard’s lecturer in forensic medicine, was later appointed full professor of Legal Medicine.

Draper transmits Bidwell’s full account of the lightning victims as it was published in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal in 1862. After a violent strike that instantly killed three soldiers Dr. Bidwell wrote:

‘I noticed on two of the corpses this morning the peculiar and beautiful arborescent appearance, on the chest and abdomen, of lightning-stroke. Had the accident happened under or near a tree, I suppose some would have designated it a photograph of the tree. As it happens that there was not a tree of any kind or size within at least two miles…the hypothesis must be allowed insufficient for the case.’

Three Civil War-related medical letters one of which concerns the after effects of lightning upon the human body.


Description: [1864 to 1873 Letters with Medical Content by or concerning Civil War Surgeon Edwin C. Bidwell, 31st Massachusetts Volunteers].

1. Boston, October 19, 1864. Quarto, bifolium, engraved, illus. letterhead from Massachusetts Office of Surgeon General, [1]p. 2. New Orleans. November 10, 1864. [1]p., (see description) 3. Boston. June 14, 1873. 8vo, bifolium. [3]pp. All items in very good condition.

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Ref. For other war-time military and medical observations by Civil War surgeon Dr. Bidwell, see: 31st Massachusetts Volunteers – Honoring the Civil War Soldiers of the Western Bay State Regiment accessed online.


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