Something a little different

Today I had time to finally go see the National Museum of Civil War Medicine.  This museum covered two floors of an older building in downtown Frederick, MD; and I thought it was a well laid out and maintained museum.  It was very clean and the artifacts on display were in excellent condition.  I have attached a couple of the scenes:  one showing a hospital room and the other the loading of a patient on an ambulance wagon.

You probably could not say there was anything beautiful about this subject, but there were some interesting facts:
1.  During the Civil War it became an accepted premise that women could work away from their homes as nurses.
2. Because they were in a hurry for enlistments, only cursory entrance physical examinations were done on the men; and many of them entered the service already ill with something.
3.  95% of all surgeries done during the Civil War were done with anesthesia--chloraform or ether.
4.  2/3 of the deaths during this war were due to illnesses and infections, and not necessarily the wounds received or the surgery being done.
5.  It was due to the efforts of a Dr. Letterman, Union surgeon, that triage was developed.

One other thing I saw that amazed me were two photographs of a man: the first one showed him looking very grotesque after having surgery on his face to stop a horrible infection.  The second photo showed him looking much better because he had actually had plastic surgery done on his face.  I had no idea they were doing plastic surgery that long ago.

Since I am on the subject of medicine, let me talk about Henry Langdon, MD.  I learned about this man while working at a different museum in Ohio.  He was a Civil War surgeon, who had survived the war, and picked up his practice once again after the war.  He was very respected in the community, and he was doing research to find out why people had strokes.  I figure he must have been doing the research because dying from a stroke could have run in his family.  Unfortunately, while only in his 30's, he died of a massive stroke in his office.  Now, here is the interesting part--in particular for my friends who are interested in the spirit world--on one occasion I had a friend, who is a medium, come out to the museum to help me with a project.  She quickly picked up on Dr. Langdon's energy as we stood in his office building.  He had a message for all of us, and that was that before we are born, we know how many heartbeats we have until we die.  Of course, once we are born we do not remember this.  But, he continued to say that we should avoid stress as much as possible,  as stress uses up those heartbeats, and, of course, also uses up our lives all the quicker.  So, please try to remember the doctor's advice to let go of stress as quickly as you can.