His Sword a Scalpel - by Jack Dempsey & Michigan Civil War Association (Hardcover)

About the Book

A groundbreaking study of the exemplary career of Charles S. Tripler, first Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac, savaged by politics and the US Sanitary Commission.

Book Synopsis

Charles Stuart Tripler built a sterling reputation in the antebellum US Army. Veteran of the Seminole and Mexican-American wars, chief medical officer on the typhoid-ravaged voyage commanded by U.S. Grant, Tripler studied and lectured on advances in military medicine and wrote a standard US Army guidebook. Appointed Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac after First Bull Run, Tripler confronted the daunting task of building a medical infrastructure for America's largest army. His leadership enabled the near-capture of the Confederate capital during the Peninsula Campaign. Instead of advancement, fame, and recognition, lobbying by the US Sanitary Commission torpedoed his promotion. He remained loyal, in uniform, launching a medical installation for veterans - regardless of race - that continues today as a university research and learning facility. Only a tragic death at age sixty put an end to his Army career. Recent scholarship has begun correcting the trope that the Civil War was a medical disaster rife with inexperienced surgeons hacking off limbs. Instead, many practitioners were unsung heroes in a conflict overwhelming in its scope and effect on health and welfare. Tripler is an exemplar, and this freshly researched volume illuminates how health issues can become embroiled in politics, as replicated during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Review Quotes

Beautifully written and fact filled. A great job of historical writing. -Dr. John L. Cameron, Distinguished Professor of Surgery, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

General Charles Stuart Tripler was the first Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac. It was he who envisioned and built the medical infrastructure for the Union army near the beginning of the Civil War - a model that has served as a template for all subsequent iterations of the medical departments of the United States Army. Unlike so many other Civil War generals, Tripler did not have the opportunity to burnish his own reputation through post-bellum memoirs. He died in 1866, just months after the end of the conflict. In an unfair twist of history, Tripler's legacy was almost completely eclipsed by that of his successor, Major Jonathan Letterman - but no longer. Jack Dempsey's thoroughly-researched and well-documented His Sword a Scalpel does a masterful job of restoring the reputation of this humble, compassionate and extremely capable servant of the medical profession. Health care workers may be especially drawn to items in the Appendix, including the Mexico Report and features on the Tripler ambulance wagon and his Crimean oven. It would be well for every modern-day physician and surgeon to emulate the life and service of this noble American doctor. -Dennis A. Rasbach graduated from Johns Hopkins University Medical School, has more than three decades of experience in general surgery, and is an author of Civil War titles Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the Petersburg Campaign and I Am Perhaps Dying

This work is a very thorough and cogently argued treatment. It offers a very persuasive defense of Tripler's reputation, which has been unjustly maligned. Tripler had to adapt to an entirely new structure and scale of warfare. -Dr. Martin J. Hershock. Historical author; Dean and Professor of History at University of Michigan-Dearborn

Author Jack Dempsey has done history, Michigan, and all of us an enormous favor by telling for the first time the story of Dr. Charles Stuart Tripler, a career military officer and physician who did more than anyone to advance battlefield medicine at the beginning of the Civil War. His insights and reforms undoubtedly saved countless lives, then and later, before politics ousted him from his post. His Sword a Scalpel is compelling, and is best read in combination with Heart In Tatters: Eunice Hunt Tripler and the Civil War, the story of the heroic physician's wife, who survived her husband by nearly half a century. -Jack Lessenberry. Award-winning journalist, editor, columnist, author, and former president of the Historical Society of Michigan

A fabulous work with extensive and thorough survey of the relevant primary and secondary sources. A really wonderful read presenting a lot of new insights. -John Lustrea, author, editor, M.A. in Public History, is former director of education at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine.