...streams. Most of the operating tables were placed in the open where the light was best, some of them partially protected against the rain by tarpaulins...amputated arms or legs in heaps, sometimes more than man-high. Antiseptic methods were still unknown at that time. As a wounded man was lifted on the table,...

...streams. Most of the operatingtables were placed in the open, where the light was best, some of them partially protected against the rain by tarpaulins...amputated arms or legs in heaps, sometimes more than man-high. Antiseptic methods were still unknown at that time. As a wounded man was lifted on the table,...

...streams. Most of the operating tables were placed in the open where the light was best, some of them partially protected against the rain by tarpaulins...amputated arms or legs in heaps, sometimes more than man-high. Antiseptic methods were still unknown at that time. As a wounded man was lifted on the table,...

...battle "Most of the operating tables were placed in the open where the light was best, some of them partially protected against the rain by tarpaulins...unknown at that time. As a wounded man was lifted upon the table, often shrieking with pain as the attendants handled him, the surgeon quickly examined...

...light was best, some of them partially protected against the rain by tarpaulins or blankets stretcht upon poles. There stood the surgeons, their sleeves...occupied, around them pools of blood and amputated arms and legs in heaps sometimes more than man high. Antiseptic methods were still unknown at that time....

...hospital, further dangers lurked. "There stood the surgeons," wrote a Union officer at Gettysburg, "their sleeves rolled up to the elbows, their bare...the table or had their hands otherwise occupied." Knowing nothing of bacteria, surgeons of the day believed that a finger was the ideal tool for probing...

...were like at this crucible of the war. His words play like something out of a fever-fueled nightmare: There stood the surgeons, their sleeves rolled up...amputated arms or legs in heaps, sometimes more than man-high... As a wounded man was lifted on the table, often shrieking with pain as the attendants handled...

...to their elbows, their bare arms as well as their aprons smeared with blood, their knives not seldom between their teeth, while they were helping a patient on or off the table, or their hands otherwise occupied ; around them pools of blood and amputated limbs in heaps. "Antiseptic...