He divided the wards into five divisional hospitals, and appointed a surgeon-in-chief for each of the divisions. In addition to the patient wards, McCaw’s workmen constructed bake houses, kitchens, a soap house, five ice houses, a large stable, a guard house, a chapel, a bathhouse, five dead houses, and carpenter, blacksmith, and apothecary shops, bringing the total number of buildings to nearly 150.Ī first order of business for McCaw was organizing the massive hospital facility. With the buildings arranged in this fashion, Chimborazo became the first of the pavilion-style hospitals in America.
#Civil war hospital tents full
Wide avenues separated the rows of ward buildings to take full advantage of the fresh air that McCaw believed necessary to speed patient recovery. The ninety hospital wards accommodated approximately forty beds each, giving the hospital a capacity ranging from 3,400 to 3,600 patients. A woodstove provided warmth, and a single candle lit the interior for the nighttime shift of attending physicians. To soften the crudeness of the rough-hewn interior, every window had a white curtain, and often a growing vine or shelf of plants.
#Civil war hospital tents windows
Three doors and ten windows ran along each side, providing both access and necessary ventilation. The roofs were shingled, and the floors covered with wood planks. The walls were crudely constructed by nailing two-inch-thick boards vertically to a simple frame, then applying a coat of whitewash to both the interior and exterior.
Evidence suggests that they measured about eighty by twenty-eight feet. Details about the facilities, particularly the patient wards, are plentiful. Surviving records suggest that McCaw converted the nearly complete winter quarters into Chimborazo Hospital. All these traits served him well as Chimborazo’s head surgeon. “He was energetic-capable-skillful … Difficulties melted away beneath the warmth of his ready interest,” recorded a hospital matron. His contemporaries viewed McCaw as incredibly competent, extremely modest, and a great organizer and administrator. In 1858, he joined the Medical College of Virginia staff as professor of chemistry, while also serving as the editor of the Virginia Medical and Surgical Journal. He earned his medical degree from the University of New York in 1844, and immediately went into private practice. McCaw, in command with the rank of surgeon-in-chief.Ī native Richmonder, McCaw was born in 1823 into a family of physicians. He placed a prominent Richmond physician and Medical College of Virginia professor, Dr. With many of the Chimborazo structures in place, and the vast majority of the Confederate army wintering in Northern Virginia, Moore determined to convert the barracks to a hospital facility. This fact, coupled with the realization that many soldiers died that first summer of the war because of the crowded conditions in the spaces that were selected for hospitals-including hotels, warehouses, stores, and private homes-led the surgeon general to look elsewhere for suitable hospital spaces. Moore, recognized Richmond’s lack of capacity to care for the army’s sick and wounded. Not long after this construction began, the newly appointed surgeon general of the Confederacy, Samuel P. Their efforts contributed to one of the great advancements in mid-nineteenth-century medicine: the acceptance of hospital care for the sick and injured, which was a concept not embraced in America prior to 1865. With no model to draw on, Chimborazo Hospital’s success can be attributed to a combination of its open-air, pavilion-style design the comparatively good quality of care innovative practices and the supreme dedication of the caregivers-men and women, black and white, slave and free. The best-staffed and equipped Union hospitals, in comparison, achieved a 10 percent mortality rate. Few hospitals in the Confederacy had lower mortality rates, and those that did generally received patients who were further along in their recovery. Of this number, approximately 6,500 to 8,000 died, resulting in a mortality rate of about 9 percent. The hospital admitted nearly 78,000 patients suffering from battlefield wounds and diseases.
Chimborazo Hospital, located in the Confederate capital of Richmond, was the largest and most famous medical facility in the South during the American Civil War (1861–1865).
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