Doctors in Blue: The Medical History of the Union Army in the Civil War

Similar in scope to H. H. Cunningham’s Doctors in Gray, George Worthington Adams’ Doctors in Blue, originally published more than forty years ago and now available for the first time in paperback, remains the definitive work on the medical history of the Union army. Adams calculates that 300,000 Union soldiers lost their lives during the war. Confederate attacks account for only a third of these deaths, disease for the rest. In addition, there were a startling 400,000 wounded or injured and almost 6,000,000 cases of illness.

Undoubtedly, behind the sickness and mortality statistics of the Civil War lie ignorance and inefficiency. But Doctors in Blue reveals the earnestness, cooperative spirit, and great scientific strides of the period as well.