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Essay winner gets look at Civil War medicine at FSNHS
FORT SCOTT, Kan. -- The Fort Scott National Historic Site hosted Ryan Kelly and his family for an extensive tour of the facilities here Thursday and Friday. Kelly, from Topeka, was one of five winners in the state of Kansas of an essay contest sponsored by Kansas' National Parks sites.
Kelly's essay was selected from one of more than 300 essays, according to Barak Geertsen, FSNHS Park Ranger. The theme for the contest was "I am American."
The contest was inspired by an upcoming Ken Burns PBS series, "The National Parks: America's Best Idea", which is about the establishment of what is now the National Park Service.
As one of the five winners, Kelly received $200 and the use of video equipment to record his tour of the fort. His tour of the fort was recorded by KTWU-TV producer Scott Williams to be used in an episode of "Sunflower Journeys," which is shown on Kansas public television stations (KTWU comes in cable channel 17 in Fort Scott or channel 30 over the air via a relay station near Bronson).
Kelly's essay is about his great grandparents' struggles as an epidemic of black diphtheria struck in the late 1800s. Of all their children, only two survived the plague.
"One of them was saved when they took a feather dipped in kerosene and put it down his throat," Kelly said to a small gathering in the Grand Hall at the fort before the tour began. "It forced out all the stuff that was in his lungs." Kelly noted that it was feared the one child had also perished but the feather treatment helped revive him.
The spread of the disease was so rampant that families were quarantined to their homes, which meant they couldn't even leave their homes to bury the dead. Kelly said his great grandparents snuck away late one night and buried their children alone when no one was watching.
Noting that another child of his great grandparents had died before the plagues but that they went on afterwards to have another child and then to adopt another child off an "orphan train," Kelly said that his great grandparents had "kinda overcome their losses twice."
Kelly's family has continued the tradition of adoption established by his great grandparents. Little sister Ella is adopted and was along for the tour along with Ryan's parents, Pat and Lisa, and his younger brother, Bailey.
Geertsen said that Kelly was brought to Fort Scott because of a tie-in with his essay as one of the buildings served as the post hospital.
"We felt it was a natural tie-in to his story," Geertsen said. "Also, people lost children at the fort due to illness. And, although this isn't a direct tie-in to the fort itself, one of the buildings served as a children's home for 50 years."
The Kellys were invited to be one of the first to see a new movie presentation about the fort's history, "Fort Scott and the Growth of a Nation," which will officially premiere in September. After that, their first stop on the tour was to the fort hospital, where re-enactors described medical procedures of the 1840's.
Tim Fields and Sandy Wells played a doctor and nurse, respectively, who used Ryan as a model to show how soldiers were treated. Fields said that while the technology used was about as good as was possible for the times, theories about the treatment of disease were still bound in beliefs about 200 years behind the times.
When the war began, the government requested only 125 surgeons because it was thought the conflict would last only about three months. But eventually, more than 12,000 surgeons saw time treating wounded soldiers. More than 1.5 million soldiers were injured, of which 620,000 died. Fields said that, while about 29,000 soldiers suffered amputation, two-thirds of the deaths in the war were due to disease, not battle wounds.
"At the time, doctors didn't recognize that bacteria was the cause of disease," Fields said in his presentation. It was thought that inducing bleeding, either by cutting the patient or putting leaches on his head, or inducing diarrhea would cure the soldier as the theory was that the disease would exit the body along with the fluids.
The Civil War was also the first time that women were brought in to act as nurses. In past conflicts, men acted as nurses but at this time, all able-bodied men were needed in battle. Field and Wells explained that the criteria to become a nurse was quite strict. Among the requirements was that the women be "very old" -- which during that time meant that she had to be at least 30 years old. The head nurse for the Army also wanted women who were not very attractive as she didn't want romance to bud between a nurse and her patient.
Fields also showed the Army's medicine kit that was found in most hospitals. He explained that of all the liquids and powders that were provided, only eight of them had any actual benefit. Coffee powder and other ineffective things were included as well as others that are now known to be poisonous.
The tour later went on to other buildings on the fort the rest of Thursday and most of the day Friday.
Williams said that Kelly's tour would air on "Sunflower Journeys" Sept. 17 program.