Gangrene and glory

by Frank R. Freemon

I am the author of this book. It is meant to give the reader the experience of living in the Civil War era. You are a doctor mystified by malaria and yellow fever (the last chapter tells you that these disorders are carried from person to person by a mosquito). You are a soldier wounded on the field at Gettysburg. What happens to you? The book has a lot of pictures, maybe too many, and some "readers" start thumbing through the book and miss the experience. You think the charge at the Angle was glorious. Glory. Wait a few weeks until your wound has become gangrenous. The smell drives everybody away, but you cannot get away from your own leg. Your leg will kill you unless someone cuts it off. Then your stump gets gangrene. Glory fades.