Events

Past Event

The John K. Lattimer Lecture – The Marrow of Tragedy: Disease and Diversity in Civil War Medicine

February 21, 2017
6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
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New York Academy of Medicine, 1216 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY

Speaker: Margaret Humphreys, Josiah Charles Trent Professor in the History of Medicine at Duke University

Health care in the U.S. Civil War is often depicted as gruesome, with amputations (sans anesthesia) as the centerpiece of horror. In actuality, hospitals could be sites of healing, although there were significant differences between North and South. In this lecture, Margaret Humphreys highlights the variations among medical loci during the war, an analysis that illustrates the aspects of “good health care” that made a difference in the survival of Civil War patients.

The event cost is $12 for the general public; $8 for Friends, Fellows, Members, and Seniors; and free to students with ID. Tickets can be purchased online.

Margaret Humphreys is the Josiah Charles Trent Professor in the History of Medicine at Duke University. She received her PhD in the History of Science (1983) and MD (1987) from Harvard University. She is the author of Yellow Fever and the South (Rutgers, 1992) and Malaria: Poverty, Race and Public Health in the United States (Johns Hopkins, 2001), Intensely Human: The Health of the Black Soldier in American Civil War (2008) and Marrow of Tragedy: The Health Crisis of the American Civil War (2013). She teaches the history of medicine, public health, global health, food, and biology to undergraduates at Duke University, and is editor emeritus of the Journal of the History of Medicine.

This event is part of the New York Academy of Medicine’s Legacies of War: Medical Innovations and Impacts series.