Review - "The Confederate Navy Medical Corps: Organization, Personnel and Actions" by Guy Hasegawa

[The Confederate Navy Medical Corps: Organization, Personnel and Actions by Guy R. Hasegawa (McFarland, 2024). Softcover, photos, illustrations, roster, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:v,188/244. ISBN:978-1-4766-9451-1. $39.95]

Pharmacist Guy Hasegawa is the author of a number of notable studies related to Civil War science and medicine, and he's also delved deeply into bureaucratic histories. His Matchless Organization: The Confederate Army Medical Department was released in 2021, and his research into that department's smaller naval counterpart, the Confederate States Navy's Office of Medicine and Surgery (OMS), has resulted in the publication of The Confederate Navy Medical Corps: Organization, Personnel and Actions. The CSN grew steadily throughout the war, peaking at just over 5,000 officers and men along with around 500 additional personnel in the CS Marine Corps. All of those men needed medical care, and it was the task of Surgeon William A.W. Spotswood and his OMS to provide it on land, river, and sea.

During the chaos and destruction of Richmond's evacuation in 1865, much of the Confederate Navy's records were lost. Making Hasegawa's task even more difficult, CSN surgeon diary, journal, and letter resources are few in number. Recognizing that many gaps can probably never be adequately filled, the author nevertheless dove into newly searchable archives and was able, with the help of other key sources, to piece together a more than respectable volume tracing the history, staffing, organization, duties, and actions of the naval medical corps. As expected, the CSN adopted (or adapted) a great many legacy aspects from the USN, and Hasegawa, with due care, explores the strong possibility that missing information about the CSN medical department's organization and practices can be addressed at least to some degree by extrapolating from how the USN was run.

Recruitment and evaluation of top personnel is a major part of Hasegawa's study. While Confederate authorities hoped and expected that resigned USN medical officers would form the core around which an effective medical service might be built, the level of need rapidly outstripped supply. Meeting that need meant that other sources, such as state navies, civilian doctors (who would be accorded standing as acting assistant surgeons), and even the Confederate Army, had to be tapped. In the end, roughly a third of the 106 appointees as surgeons in the CSN previously served in the USN. Assisting the surgeons directly were surgeons' stewards and hospital stewards (another carryover from the USN). The author recounts the duties of each and notes that, even though they were very different by USN tradition (surgeons' stewards were appointed from the enlisted ranks and were tasked with medical care as well as record-keeping while hospital stewards were civilians who supervised staff and performed administrative duties but were not involved in direct patient care), sometimes the distinction between the two was not so clear in the CSN.

As one might have expected, it was a struggle for Confederate authorities to locally source enough medical supplies to meet the needs of the service. It was hoped that the balance, particularly in prepared medicines that Confederate labs were unable to replicate en masse, could be obtained through the blockade. Even though much of that critical supply entered the country through widely dispersed port cities, Richmond still insisted upon a central depot for their dispersal. Hasegawa keenly observes that the government's failure to create satellite medical supply depots closer to the major blockade-running ports represented a significant and needless inefficiency in the purveying department's distribution operations. The author also found discrepancies between official department reports prepared at the top and those submitted downstream. For example, while the head of purveying in late 1864 confidently reported that all vessels in the CSN were adequately stocked with medical supplies, the author's deeper digging into the sources reveals that not to have been the case.

Hasegawa comprehensively lists and describes the many different types of assignments that were required of CSN surgeons. These ranged from shipboard postings to naval stations, navy yards, shore batteries, and even army assignments. Another duty, the organized but not exactly standardized process of examining recruits, is also discussed in some detail. While the CSN did not possess far-flung oceanic squadrons, surgeons did serve aboard commerce raiders and blockade runners. It is noted that most surgeons, especially the younger ones, were posted to a number of these different assignments during their Civil War service. With surgeons even accompanying small-boat raids, the personal danger could be considerable and more than a few naval surgeons were captured during the war.

Of course, the staffing and administering of naval hospitals, based either on shore or on a small number of hospital ships, was another major responsibility of the OMS. In the book, Hasegawa briefly recounts the history of naval hospitals established at Richmond and at major cities all along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Individuals who served at those places as medical officers are also identified in the text. The range of diseases commonly treated in the hospitals as well as their treatment regimens are documented, and it is noted that malaria was the most challenging disease faced given the commonality of contact with mosquito-infested habitats in the waterborne service.

As an added reference tool, an annotated list of all known medical officers commissioned in the CSN is included as an appendix. Surmounting in many ways the challenges and limitations the author was confronted with during this research project, a coherent portrait of the Confederate States Navy's medical officer corps, their duties, experiences, and wartime accomplishments emerges from the text. As Hasegawa laments, the information does not exist to offer a comprehensive comparison between the medical corps of the Union and Confederate navies, but there is enough raw data scattered about and reliably admiring testimonials from the other services available to enable the author to conclude that the CSN medical department's performance was "quite creditable" (pg. 187) under the circumstances.