Bookworm #93 – Author Conversation: Barbara Franco, “Gettysburg Surgeons: Facing a Common Enemy in the Civil War’s Deadliest Battle”

Angela Oonk hosts this webinar series discussing history topics with guests. This month, historian and author of Gettysburg Surgeons: Facing a Common Enemy in the Civil War’s Deadliest Battle Barbara Franco takes us to Gettysburg, the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. A thousand surgeons faced an unprecedented medical catastrophe: 25,000 wounded soldiers needing immediate care with only primitive tools and their own determination to save lives.

At Gettysburg’s makeshift hospitals—set up in barns, churches, and blood-soaked fields—military and civilian surgeons from both North and South worked around the clock performing life-saving operations under fire. Drawing from a decade of meticulous research, Franco reveals how these courageous medical professionals revolutionized battlefield medicine and established principles still saving lives today.