MACLEOD, George H. B.
Sir George Husband Baird Macleod (1828-92) began his medical studies at Glasgow and continued them in London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna before returning to complete his degree at Glasgow in 1853. Following service in the Crimean War, he practised in Glasgow, was professor of surgery at Anderson's College and succeeded Lister as chair of surgery at Glasgow in 1869. He wrote this book following his experiences in the Crimean War as a surgeon at Smyrna and Sebastopol. It was printed in the US as part of the Union effort to provide up-to-date medical references for surgeons. Unfortunately, it was also printed in Richmond by the Confederacy the same year, thus preventing the Union from possessing any advantage. Besides surgery, Macleod comments on the geography of the Crimea, the hardships of camp life, soldiers as patients, the treatment of gunshot wounds, amputation, the use of chloroform, tetanus, gangrene, erysipelas, and frostbite. In his Preface he states that the war "has shown us wounds of a severity, perhaps, never before equaled; it has enabled us to observe the effects of missiles introduced for the first time into warfare; it has afforded us an opporunity of watching how dyscrasial disease may complicate injuries, and render skill abortive; and it has helped us to observe the development of those diseases of circulstances which may sweep away an army without any other weapon." On a more positive note, he pays tribute to Florence Nightingale and her nurses on pp. 54-58, for those "gentle offices of kindness which a woman can alone bestow." He states that "To the surgeon a good nurse is of incalculable service."
