Wounded for Life: Union Veterans of the Civil War

Join the National Museum of Civil War Medicine for their Saturday Speaker Series as Dr. Robert Hicks examines how wounded warriors survived after the war. By exploring how two Union veterans, an African American private who contracted malaria and a white colonel whose arm was amputated, survived to work, marry, and rear children, we see how they constructed new identities to cope with how the war changed their bodies. This talk is based on his book, “Wounded for Life: Seven Union Veterans of the Civil War.”

Robert D. Hicks, PhD is an independent scholar of the history of science and medicine. Formerly, he served as director of the Mütter Museum and Historical Medical Library and William Maul Measey Chair for the History of Medicine at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. He has worked with museum-based education and exhibits for four decades, primarily as a consultant to historic sites and museums. His most recent book “Civil War Medicine: A Surgeon’s Experience,” appeared in 2019 by Indiana University Press.