Hayes Lowe
Hospitals, etc.
Wed Jun 13 12:17:49 2001


I've been trying to find answers to very similar questions, myself.

Some of what I do know is that the wounded were sent by wagon, rail, and boat. From what I have seen, the wounded were sent by wagon to railway or waterway depots. From there, they would be transported to the State's hospital. Each State (well, at least most States) had hospitals around the Confederacy to take care of their own troops. The hospital system was drastically changed a couple of times during the war, so this procedure varied during different dates.


At any rate, it was not uncommon for soldiers to be carried long distances for treatment. They were often sent to hospitals in their home State after receiving initial treatment.

I don't know how they found their regiments, but I think that communication then was much better than we realize, today. However, I don't think that it was necessarily very quick, and this would delay a man finding where his unit was, and getting orders/approvals/passes to return. I would think that this process would generally take a couple of weeks, plus transportation time (again by wagon, rail, boat, or sometimes by foot).

As to the "dated", I would assume that this was a transcription done by the Hospital Steward on that date, of earlier medical records. In other words, the earlier date was from some other document, and on the later date, the Hospital Steward consolidated dates from several sources for all the men treated during a certain period of time.