These better trained physicians often headed medical schools, and in the Civil War were in the ... the practice of medicine by dictating the removal of the deadly mercury compound, calomel ...

The bloodiest war in American history was also one of the most influential in battlefield medicine. Civil War surgeons ... had survived pneumonia, but the mercury pills he took as a treatment ...

Editor's Note: Shauna Devine, Ph.D., is a historian of Civil War and American medicine. She has a Ph.D. in medical history and currently holds a joint appointment as a research fellow at the ...