“With Bullets Singing All Around Me”

The Civil War Sesquicentennial kicks off this year with many events planned around the country and online. Check out the Civil War Preservation Trust website for news and events near you!

The Rose Melnick Medical Museum is pleased to loan our Civil War- era surgical kit to a Pennsylvania museum putting on an exhibit about the Civil War and its impact on American citizens. They were interested in this particular kit because it was made by a medical instrument company from Philadelphia. It contains a tourniquet, two knives, two saws, and an artery hook. The kit also includes trephining tools for cutting the skull. Although by the 1860s the procedure was performed less often, it was still used to treat hemorrhages, sub-dural abscesses, and depressed fractures of the skull. The main trephine tool is the “T” shaped trepan with a bladed cylinder at one end. Other tools for trephining are the Hey’s saw (two small saws with one rounded and one straight edge).For more information about this interesting kit and others like it, see our post on 19th century amputation and surgical kits.

The ehxibit will show at the Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science and Art from February 4th to July 17th.

“With bullets singing all around me”: Regional Stories of the Civil War

The American Civil War was a defining moment for a young nation and its people, both free and enslaved. Throughout Northeast Pennsylvania and New York’s Southern Tier no one was left untouched by the cataclysmic events of 1861-1865. The Everhart Museum will present “With bullets singing all around me,” a multi-disciplinary exhibit focusing on the Civil War’s impact on people from the region, particularly the Museum’s founder, Dr. Isaiah Fawkes Everhart, who served as a field surgeon with the 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry. Partnering with regional historical societies and private collectors, the Everhart’s exhibit will focus on individual stories from both the battlefield and the home front. One of the exhibit’s highlights will be items owned and used by Dr. Everhart.